Apologies to anyone who isn’t a comment spammer and found themselves blocked from the blog. I was trying out ‘Bad Behaviour’, which promised to block suspicious activity. It did. It also blocked me.
It turned out that a zealous spam IP blacklist that the plug-in used had listed my then adsl dynamic IP address. I had presumably just inherited the address from some poor mug with a home PC that is part of some romanian controlled botnet pumping out spam.
Please people, if you must use a Windows machine, take all necessary precautions. My spam load has recently shot through the roof. Apparently an estimated 4.8 million Windows PCs worldwide are part of spammer controlled botnets.
In vain did I protest to the blacklisters that I only use Macs, that we Mac users are currently un-virused, un-trojaned and that, although root kits exist, there are no active delivery mechanisms beyond direct access to the machine, (Mac users of course being notoriously smug in this regard), but no. I had to get the IP unblacklisted and wait for it to propogate.
I have therefore made an administrative decision that I can live without ‘Bad Behaviour’. Sorry to anyone else affected (except comment spammers).