The Spam Says Buon luogo!

As you might be aware, I've been running the Bard's Tale IV Petition list for the past several years. This is a collection of signatures, stories, and pleas by people who enjoyed the classic Bard's Tale series of role playing computer games from the 1980's and would like to see another game of the same style. Not, just to pull an example out of the air, a modern console game with the Bard's Tale name tacked on at the end.

You may think that would be a small group, but at last count (July 2006) there have been over 1350 signatures. Okay, given the huge expanse of the Internet, that probably is a small group. On the other hand, that's 1350 people willing to pay money for a product, so anybody in the gaming industry who can make Bard's Tale 4 happen, listen up!

Well, the gaming industry might not take us seriously, but there are some business people who do. There are business people who feel we are a viable customer base. There are business people who are desperate to communicate with us.

Unfortunately, these business people are spammers.

Spammers, I can handle. I'm used to spam. You can't run a website these days without being bombarded by spam on a constant basis. In order to get feedback from your visitors, you have to have a method of communication. You can put a simple mail-to link on the website, but special robots called harvesters will quickly find it and add it to numerous lists. You'll have all the free herbal supplements you can stomach in no time.

I've added a tiny bit of obsfucation to the email addresses on Cheek.Org to keep that to a minimum. This works fine as long as the visitor's browser handles the javascript properly. If not, the visitor will have to look at a tiny picture of my email address and type it in manually (another popular way to avoid email harvesting).

Another method of communication is feedback forms, especially forms which automagically add the feedback to a webpage or email it to the webmaster. These used to be pretty safe, but simply aren't anymore. I blame the explosion of blogs and blogging services for this. There are so many blogs in the world with feedback and comment forms that it became worthwhile for the spammers to re-write their email harvesting robots into form harvesting robots. Instead of sending spam to a zillion email addresses, they send spam to a zillion website comment forms which automagically get added to the website (so every visitor to the site sees the advertisement) or forwarded to the webmaster (bypassing most spam filters in the process).

Better advertising through technology. Excuse me while I take a moment to throw up.

The Bard's Tale IV Petition used to have such a form, but then the spammers found it. Not just any spammers, mind you. I attracted Mafia spammers. Normal webmasters get spam. I get spam in Italian!

"Buon luogo, appena perfetto, le mie congratulazioni! Le abilità che grandi mostrate, io amano questa! Buona fortuna!"

I think that means "Great site, nearly perfect, congratulations! It shows great potential. I love it. Good luck!" Which would be good to hear if it wasn't from an obviously fictitious email address and followed by a dozen links to porn sites.

Luckily, being a stupid Amercian who can't even speak English correctly, I get very few legitimate emails in Italian, so I can simply disregard these. However, it's still annoying because since they come from my own forms, most of them slip right through my spam filters. In teaching the filters to stop the Mafia spam, I risk blocking the legitimate Bard's Tale IV Petitions. As such, I decided to remove the form until I could figure out how to fix the problem.

Here's how you can help:

If anyone knows of a drop-in formmail.cgi replacement which is spambot resistant, easy for humans to use, and obscures the target email address, please let me know by dropping me a line at $mail:bard2005@cheek.org?subject=formmail_replacement$ with a subject line of formmail replacement.

I am also looking for some way to automate my website updates. I am currently using a combination of hand-coded HTML and a few simple GFA BASIC programs. What I'd really love is some FOSS or cheap Win2K application that lets me type in plain text and drag a few pictures, drops it all into a template, and uploads it. Bonus points if the app can also keep track of which pages have been changed or added so visitors can see a "what's new" list when they visit. In other words, I'm trying to separate the creative process of generating content from the technical process of maintaining this website. If you have any sugestions, please let me know by dropping me a line at $mail:troy2006@cheek.org?subject=web_application$ with a subject line of web application.