spam

Making gradual improvements, starting with whatever bugs you the most

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , ,

A long project can be paralyzing at times, making it hard to figure out where to start. A trick that I learned in model railroading is to just work on whatever small percentage of the project that bothers you the most. Then, when that’s done, cycle back, create another subproject that fixes whatever bugs you the most now, and keep making incremental improvements like that until you get where you want.

I’ve used the same trick on home improvement projects, and I applied it to this web site over the course of the last few weeks, doing a series of incremental improvements. It led places I didn’t expect it.
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Beware of unexpected links in e-mail messages

Dave Farquhar security , ,

Hackers are stealing Yahoo accounts by sending messages containing malicious web page links.

The message looks like a link to a web page on MSNBC. But if an unsuspecting user clicks on it, it redirects to another page that steals the e-mail account, allowing the hacker to use the account to send spam, or grab the account’s contact list.

The gory details are here.
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Four simple steps to optimize WordPress

Dave Farquhar Apache, Linux , , , , ,

A couple of years ago, I stood up a WordPress server. I made no effort to tune it, let alone turbocharge it, which is a decision I later came to regret. If your site gets more than a few hundred hits per day, you need to tune it. If you want to get more than a few hundred hits per day, you need to tune it because Apache and MySQL’s default settings are by no means one-size-fits-all. And you can never have too much speed. There are two reasons for that: Google favors fast sites over slow sites, and Amazon found that a one-second delay in page load drops traffic by 7 percent.

There’s a lot of advice out there on tuning WordPress, some of which seems to be good, and some of it not so good.

Here are four things that I know work. I run Apache and MySQL under Linux; these tools may run under Windows or OS X too.
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Wi-fi wants to be free… except it’s not 1994 anymore

Dave Farquhar security , , ,

The Open Wi-Fi movement was on the front page of Slashdot yesterday afternoon. Predictably, comment #2 was, “give me immunity from the MPAA and RIAA and I’ll open my Wi-Fi.” Valid point. Very valid point.

Though there are other problems, too.

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A minor (but vital) Apache performance tweak

Dave Farquhar Apache, Linux , , , , ,

My problems seem to have become more rare since I started blocking spambots and tuned PHP and Apache but last night my server ran out of memory again and started timing out.

It turns out I still had a critical problem, but one that’s easy to fix with a relatively simple Perl script.

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Stopping spambots cold with Botblocker

Dave Farquhar Spam

I’ve been absolutely getting pounded lately with spam comments from spambots–to the tune of one spam comment per minute. That’s filling up and slowing down my database and consuming CPU resources that I want for human readers.

So I resorted to installing Botblocker. All I can report right now is that it seems to be working–no spam comments for several hours.

I can’t guarantee it will work forever, and I’ve got Akismet to hide whatever spam gets through, but so far my server seems less busy and more happy, which is good. Things had gotten so bad for a while that I was getting timeouts when trying to post, which is ridiculous.

Testing my new Facebook plugin

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , ,

The plugin I was using, FT Facepress II, decided to quit working, so now I’m trying to get the official Facebook WordPress plugin working.

If it does all it says it does, Facebook comments about blog posts will also show up here (and not just on Facebook), which would be nice.

Update: It appears to have worked, but it also appears to have replaced the comments engine. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. That option is easy enough to disable; I’ll give it a trial period and see. The new engine can authenticate against Facebook, AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail, so it does give some options for those who don’t have Facebook accounts.

The upside is that this may significantly reduce the spam comments. I have a good anti-spam engine, but the comments still clutter up my database.

Don’t let what happened to Mat Honan happen to you

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , ,

Technology journalist Mat Honan infamously had his entire digital life hacked and erased this week. Slate published some advice to keep the same from happening to you, and my former classmate and newspaper staff mate Theo Hahn asked me to comment.

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There’s no need to apologize for having a Yahoo or Gmail account

Dave Farquhar security , ,

I saw an assertion last week that Yahoo and Gmail accounts are less secure than an account that came straight from your ISP. Perhaps there was a time when this was true, but no longer. Today there are reasons to believe the exact opposite is true.

So, no, you don’t have to apologize for using a Yahoo or a Gmail account.
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Things I wish everyone knew about home computer security

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m a security professional by trade, with two certifications. I’m not responsible for defending your computer networks, but I want your networks to be secure. There’s a really simple reason for that. If your computer and your network is secure, then it isn’t attacking mine. Or anyone else’s.

Several fellow subscribers to a train-related interest group that I like got hacked recently, and have been sending out spam messages. They’ve received a lot of advice in the hours since. Some of it has been good, and some not as good. So I tried to think of some things that people could do in about 30 minutes to keep the crooks at bay.

Incidentally, the computer crooks won’t be going away. Computer crime happens because the criminals can make more money doing that than doing something legal. The only way to make it stop is to make it too hard, so that getting a real job becomes more profitable. You won’t solve that problem in 30 minutes, but if we all take that single step down that road, we’ll make the world that much safer. So, with that, let’s roll up our sleeves. Read more