The comment spammers and virus senders are getting too damned sneaky... if I was paranoid I'd think they're out to get me ;o)

I wrote an article that discussed the HOSTS file yesterday:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2007/05/09/895434.aspx

A comment about that article was posted by "JoAnne" as follows:

"Wednesday, May 09 2007, @ 6:19 AM (-0800 GMT)

Very interesting piece on hosts files!

Thank you...

JoAnne

WebMistress"

BUT!!!  The URL that she included in her comment was for a p0*n site - I've got a screenshot of the original comment with p0*n URL intact.  Of course, I replaced the p0*n URL with a technical URL about HOSTS files, just to make a point to the troublemaker, before allowing the comment to publish.  I'm sure "JoAnne" will be back to see if her comment has been posted.  So anyway "JoAnne, WebMistress"... you can consider this post to be a great big raspberry being blown in your general direction.

This is scary... do we have to check every damned URL of every comment just in case it's a dangerous site?

That's not the only frightening thing that happened today; I have to check all spam emails before deleting before them just in case one is legitimate.  Anyway, Trend can display information about spam, attachment blocking, inappropriate content and virus spams in the same console screen.  Anyway, Trend quarantined a virus email today, *but* the email was from a legitimate client email address and was addressed to the correct lawyer!!  That is either an amazing coincidence or we're being targeted.  Paranoia levels at the office have now hit super-high levels.

Published Wed, May 9 2007 22:55 by sandi

Comments

# re: The comment spammers and virus senders are getting too damned sneaky... if I was paranoid I'd think they're out to get me ;o)

Wednesday, May 09, 2007 10:47 AM by Aaron
You know WebMistress was just a bot.

# re: The comment spammers and virus senders are getting too damned sneaky... if I was paranoid I'd think they're out to get me ;o)

Wednesday, May 09, 2007 10:48 AM by Aaron
Or the lawyer was in your clients email contacts. Maybe they should run antivirus?

# re: The comment spammers and virus senders are getting too damned sneaky... if I was paranoid I'd think they're out to get me ;o)

Wednesday, May 09, 2007 5:00 PM by sandi

It would still be an amazing coincidence; remember how viruses mix 'n' mash email addresses before sending - the sender name is randomly selected and recipient addresses harvested.  In all the years I've been watching our email, this is the first time this has happened.  Seriously.  If the AV had not picked up that the zip file was dangerous, and if I had been going on sender, recipient, subjectline and contents, I would have been hard pressed to dissuade the lawyer that the email and its attachment were not legitimate without phoning the client to say "did you send this"?

# Blog Spammers examined

Wednesday, May 09, 2007 8:08 PM by Hosts News

Recently I have been receiving a lot of spam to the "Comments" section of my blog ... nothing