A Spam-bot Nightmare

I'm a bit frustrated this morning because somehow some dumb spam-bot started spamming my blog with comments this morning at 1 am. Grrr!

After being woke up, with bleary eyes, I figured out how to set the WordPress app on my iPhone to NOT send an audible alert whenever someone comments on a post. This was increasingly frustrating because it woke up Mrs Redshirt as well and she was not happy about it either.

I'm pretty sure, or at least thought, I had some protection set up to prevent spam comments from making things a mess, but apparently something went wrong last night. Anyway, one of my goals today is to figure out what happened and how I will make it NOT happen again.

I really question the purpose and motivation of the people who set up spam-bots that target blog comments. It's a fairly simple step, when setting up a WordPress blog, to set comments to be moderated. This prevents anything from getting through to post on the blog unless approved. That was the first thing I did when I set things up. But this didn't stop them from at least posting the comment and bothering me in the middle of the night – that's what I need to fix.

I suppose the companies that charge for spam filters could be the source of these spam-bots, but while I usually tend towards conspiracy theories, I don't really think this is source.

But what is the purpose? I mean, these comments didn't try to advertise something or get me to click on a link, so I'm not sure what they accomplished other than causing someone – me – annoyance. I don't even have many readers, so who are they trying to bother?

Perhaps it's just the troll mentality of the Internet?

In any case, I now have a job today and hopefully I will put an end to the bother of these lowlife people who live to cause others trouble. At least I can stop them from bothering my blog.

Morning Ramble 2.11