Catholic Answers Quick Questions

Friday, August 13, 2010

Why you can’t comment on my posts.

I’ve always been chided for not allowing comments on my posts.  I used to disallow comments because I didn’t have the time to read them, comment back, and properly ‘curate’ them.

Now I do it because my blog, and some others, were targeted by some hackers, using the comments to place links to websites that exploited flaws in most computers and did bad things to your computer.  The black-hat hackers (there is a difference that I’ll explain someday) would make a relatively mild comment and then put in a link.  I started getting suspicious because the same ones started commenting on everything, and my blog doesn’t get enough traffic for that kind of sudden popularity.

So I got out an old computer I use for testing purposes, installed some security sniffing software and clicked those links.  The computer suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree, but not with good presents.  The software started telling me all kind of bad things were being attempted.  So I modified the comment system to block the bad people.  They just surfaced again with new names, and if I don’t have time to moderate the posts, then I don’t have time to play games with black-hats.

Long story, still no commenting.