Spam Attack.

Stirling ?
I'd rather use this Sterling on them...

 

Bastards.
Whenever somebody mentions Spam fritters I'm cast back to my childhood.
Then I think vaguely about Spam fritters on & off for weeks.
Then I make some. With mushy peas.
Then a sense of sort of satisfied disappointment.

Repeat a couple of years later...


Bit like whenever anybody mentions Peter Cushing or Whitstable this lodges in my head.

Enjoy that mental connection.
Damned thing brings a whole new edge to Hammer & Holmes films.

 

They're still bloody coming.

Though now it's less human wave & more a situation of idle potshots at Hiroo Inoda figures emerging from the bush.

 

You think they're buggering off, but they're not really.


Red number is users waiting approval since early afternoon - ones that have triggered an IP/previous registration spam flag.
Only letting them pile up so I can see how the pattern builds & block IPs (which, sadly, these days, are a frankly bloody useless way of blocking, though it can slow machine attacks).
They're spoofing a multitude of IPs. Never blocked so many in 14 years of box-ticking here. Irritating, as it might conceivably make registration impossible for some future members.

Not had to attend spam school for a while.
The systems of attack sort of fascinate.
This wave looks like a crude script - 6 digit random usernames & Gmails, which is actually more straightforward to curtail than a roomful of poverty-stricken hot-housed humans pretending they're Cindy from Missouri, but it certainly allows more mass in the initial wave. (170+ fake accounts in this attack.)

Anyway. This has been a shortish public information ramble about spammers.
It's all deeply peculiar.
(Otto has a theory that a tiny charge per email - 1p per registration & maybe 0.001p per mail would stop it. There's something in that; though lordy I've no wish to give the Tech-lords another easy revenue stream either.)

 

Pfft.

 

Another glimpse at the system, for the curious:



Sadly, there isn't a tick box for 'Infect with syphilis, damage their house & murder all their pets' but I suppose we have to make do with our current imperfect technology.
Sigh.