Cidu Bill on Oct 29th 2010
Some of you may have noticed that updates haven’t been appearing at the usual 12:02am (ET) this week. They were all queued up to go live at the proper time, but WordPress has been processing them pretty much at random. This isn’t the usual business where twice a year updates go live an hour before or after they should for a few weeks until WordPress figures out the whole Daylight Saving Time thing (we can look forward to that starting a week from Monday): this past week updates have rescheduled themselves for 3 minutes late, 42 minutes late, and 16 hours late. I go in and put the posts online manually when I can, which of course defeats the purpose of setting up a queue. (update: I just noticed that WordPress decided to change the online-time of Saturday Morning Ewww from 12:02 to 12:26; like I said, apparently random)
Also, some of you have noticed that the spam filter has apparently stopped working. The site isn’t getting any more spam than it ever did — but now it’s all going online. My only option at this point was to change the site’s settings so that all comments get held for moderation; but once I approve one of your comments, your subsequent comments will go right through (unless, of course, they suck). Sorry for the inconvenience, but I don’t think anybody wants this site to drown in spam.
Filed in Bill Bickel, WordPress, spam | 3 responses so far
Cidu Bill on May 21st 2010
There’s an e-mail circulating about promising you a free iPad in return for testing it out for a couple of months. It will appear to have been forwarded to you by one of your e-mail contacts.
It’s a scam designed to get your e-mail password, and then use the password to send more copies of the same fake offer — as well as other shady spam — to everybody on your e-mail contacts list, appearing to have been sent by you.
Filed in Bill Bickel, iPad, scams, spam | 26 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Sep 6th 2009
If anybody has expertise in this sort of thing, I’d appreciate some suggestions:
My brother apparently picked up a computer virus or trojan that accesses his Yahoo Mail account and sends spam to people in his address list (the spam includes an .exe link). He uses a Mac 98% of the time and typically insists that his Mac can’t possibly have this sort of problem. Working under the premise that this is true, I told him to shut down his PC, since the virus/trojan can use it to do its work even if he rarely uses it himself.
I’m working under the assumption that the problem has to be with the computer and can’t be with, say, a Yahoo Mail account itself.
Is he safe as long as he only uses his Mac? Is this the sort of thing an anti-virus program could fix? Does he need something else? Might reverting his PC to an earlier restore point help?
Thanks.
Filed in Bill Bickel, Yahoo Mail, computer viruses, computers, spam, trojans | 16 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Jul 3rd 2009
You don’t have to repost it, because it was shunted into either the Moderation file or the Spam file and I’ll spot it within a few hours and get it online.
These are a few of the things that get a post automatically moved to the Moderation file: two or more links, and certain words including “suck” (which is a real painwhen we have a comic about vampires), “sex” and “penis.” A post goes directly into the Spam folder if it contains racial epithets, or any of the more common sexual terms, or if it was written by Morris Keesan. I have no idea what the WordPress spam filter has against Morris — there’s nothing hidden in either his name, his e-mail address or his ISP name that should trigger this sort of problem — but nonetheless…
Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, spam | 24 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Aug 14th 2008
Spam has pretty much made the e-mail address I’ve used for the past four years useless, so all submissions to the CIDU Page should now be sent to comicsidontunderstand………………at……………………gmail.com.
Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, spam | No responses yet
Cidu Bill on Aug 5th 2008
Spam has pretty much made the e-mail address I’ve used for the past four years useless, so all submissions to the CIDU Page should now be sent to comicsidontunderstand………………at……………………gmail.com.
A couple of other notes that I’ll be adding to the FAQ along with the e-mail change:
If you send a comment that uses the word “suck” in any context, it will be sent to my moderation queue rather than immediately appearing on the page. This filter was necessary because of the vast amount of sexually-based spam that includes the word.
Yes, once again spam is inconveniencing everybody. It sucks, I know.
I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately to “exchange links.” For the record, I’ve never done that. If anybody wants to link to the CIDU Page (and many people do), thank you. If there’s a site I think I should recommend to you guys, I’ll link to it. But I don’t play quid pro quo.
This won’t be going on the FAQ, but… You might notice that the Google Adsense ads are gone. Good old Google, screwed me again (”suck” is filtered; “screw” isn’t. Go figure). Some years back, Continue Reading »
Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Google, spam | 15 responses so far
