Several anti-spam systems protect this site's blog and web forum. Some parts of the Internet are blocked completely: I get little benefit from visits from China and Russia as people there are unlikely to be spending money here. The IP addresses still getting spam through .htaccess blocking are mostly hacked home cable/DSL accounts — impractical to block by IP, but, I've found, easy to stop by other methods.

I have my own system that stops the dumbest spammers without even needing to connect to a database (like Spam Karma, which I also use). It's so simple I thought it wouldn't work... yet it does! Some spammers are so dim even the simplest safeguards stop them.

The idiot [email protected] (in multiple, pathetically-obvious variations) hit my blog for weeks without noticing his messages were blocked. Ditto for the equally stupid [email protected] (the dots to the left of the "@" symbol are ignored in Google email addresses). [email protected] at least noticed that his spams didn't get through... but appears to have been spamming manually, checking the blog... and then trying again manually when it failed! Several other future Darwin Award-winners used the same method.

These aren't spammers blocked by Spam Karma, they're fools who couldn't even get that far: The dumbest of the dumb. They do provide one benefit: IP addresses to block. For that I offer my thanks.

Note: Email addresses shown below are provided by spammers and thus highly suspect. Most are entirely fictitious but a few may be real addresses stolen by spammers. (If a spammer has appropriated your email address just let me know and I'll remove it from the list.) Many, but not all, of the sending IP addresses are now blocked, but the ones shown below still comprise just a small part of what's in my .htaccess file.