Block the spam
September 15, 2006
After some time I got faced with some spammers again. Well, I'm not realy sure if it's a spam, more like a hack of my contact form. As far as I know the contact form is safe, so it can't be missused by others to send spam ( I hope this is not possible ). I've noticed that the contact page was requested up to fourty times a day without getting any message from the contact form, so I had to get deeper on this. The contact page was requested from the contact page, which was suspicious, since no other pages were requested from those IP's, which must mean that somebody has the contact page either bookmarked or linked on a website so it can be used for some kinda activities.
What else is very suspicious on this is the fact that it was always the same User Agent requesting the page which has been blocked yesterday. If you use this Browser with this blocked User Agent, you'll be redirected to a nice "Access Denied" page and your activity will be logged.
Since the block yesterday I haven't see this User Agent on my website, which is something positive, but also I haven't seen any logs from the "Access Denied" page. From about fourty requests a day to zero without getting any messages for the redirects of this bad User Agent . . . something I should keep my eyes open for.
My wallpapers got ripped
September 3, 2006
Four of my wallpapers got ripped . . . well actually it's not a rip because nobody claims the wallpapers as being his/hers, but the wallpapers are offered for sell. This is somehow even worse to me. Why ? ? ?
Well, first of all which wallpapers I'm talking about. I'm talking about the latest wallpaper series called "make me", there are four different pieces. I've used some of Keith's ( expressive-stock ) stock photos to create those simple and minimalistic wallpapers. Because of the fact that the wallpapers are based on someone elses stock photos, I don't want to offer those pieces for sell. Why ?
We have a model (Carla), Keith took a photo of her . . . this is O.K. Now Keith asks the model if he might upload those images as stock photos so people could create manipulations, wallpapers ot whatever . . . . She agrees . . . Now, here comes my personality. I'm creating a wallpaper and tell Keith about it, he checks it out, says it's cool and we're all happy. Now, let's have a situation where I sell these wallpapers . . . I'm makin' money, not much, but still I'm makin some. What about Keith and the model ? ? ? What do they get ? ? ? Nothing . . . And this is the point where I become the bad guy, which I don't want to be. Why a bad guy . . .because I'm selling some work based on someone elses work and this is something I don't want and I think it's not O.K. to do that as long as there is no contract about it. If I would have created these wallpapers based on some of my images, I would have offered it for sell by myself, if . . . . iiiiiiif
So why do you think I would allow others to sell my wallpapers ? ? ? Confused . . . yes . . . no . . . I don't care. I just wanna say that I'm the one who decides which one of my pieces I gonna sell or not and believe me, wallpapers are not the pieces I would sell. I made them so everybody could download them and use them AS WALLPAPERS and not use them to make some profit. Why should I charge for a simple wallpaper? If I would do that, people wouldn't use it, because why pay for something that could be free . . .
It's not like a wallpaper of Sandra Shine showing her boobies on some adult website where I want those horny boys pay 14,95$/month to get access to that wallpaper. I've created those to be FREEEEEEEEE of charge, damn it.
Anyway, if those wallpapers won't get removed from the website within the next week, well . . . let's say two weeks, then I gonna take some serious steps to solve this problem.