Spam attacks may lead me to closing this LiveJournal

[erudito]

I have been LiveJournaling a lot less than I used to. Still, there is a whole lot of personal history and comment wrapped up in my LJ that I would hate to let it go entirely. But the spam attacks are getting to such a ridiculous level that I am seriously thinking of deleting the whole thing.

Comments

I'd hate to see you go

[catsidhe]

If you go to your privacy settings, you should see some settings which might mitigate things.

Enable Comments If you set this to "Friends", then these bespoke spam accounts will be blocked right there. So, unfortunately, will visitors and the anonymous.

Comment Screening Screen non-Friends will prevent the spam from showing up, but you'll still have to go through and clean them out, looking for the Ham (the actual messages amongst the dross).

Spam Protection probably couldn't hurt, and

Captcha should probably be set to be shown to all non-Friends at least until the storm is over. Presuming that it's a bot attack, and not "mongolian hordes" (which is actual people posting for pennies a spam.)

Re: I'd hate to see you go

[erudito]

Thanks. I was already screening anonymous comments, but I have extended it to non-friends. I have added in Spam Protection and Captcha to non-Friends. I am reluctant to limit comments to "Friends" for the reasons you say.

[kitling]

I've pretty much switched entirely to friends only posting - this means a lot less spam.

[p_cat]

Oh no! That would be sad indeed.

[p_cat]

... but just in case you do, I've gone back and read your posts on narcissism again. I'm sad to say that it does sound very like my sister. Do you know whether it's common for narcissists to estrange people who criticise them or don't 'take their side' (by refusing to take sides)?

Yes

[erudito]

I cannot cite the literature on the matter, but criticism leading to estrangement certainly is both my experience and fits the logic. Otherwise they are opening up the possibility that the criticism might have some basis, and they are far too delicate/defensive/insistent in their selfdom to tolerate that,

Re: Yes

[p_cat]

Thank you. I don't need citations; just hearing that I'm not crazy really helps. It's hard enough to be estranged from someone I really love, but to have her convince the rest of the family that it's my doing - putting me in the position that I have to reaffirm her position as victim if I want to make everything right again. It was only when I went back through old LJ entries earlier this year that I saw how I'd documented my behaviour. Even I'd become convinced that maybe I was misreading things, but it turns out she was even worse than I remembered.

[montjoye]

I too have been getting a fair bit of spam on open posts. I've just turned on Captcha for non-friends. Here's hoping that helps. Ta catsidhe for the tip.

[claidheamhmor]

I switched over to Dreamwidth ages ago. No spam problem, and more stable. I imported all of my LJ posts into DW.