How to ID Spammers

People are asking how I ID'ed the spammer in a previous comment. It works like this: when a person registers a domain he or she has to provide contact information. That information is publicly available and can be accessed through what's called a WHOIS lookup. When you go to a website that offers a WHOIS service you simply type in the domain name and it can tell you who registered it. Now, many websites that offer a WHOIS lookup don't give you the registrant's contact info anymore. Here's one that does. Note that sometimes registrants lie or make up contact info, or they've started using business addresses instead of personal ones. But when you do get the individual's address, then that's a bonus! When someone spams your blog, look at the domain they're trying to lure people to and do a WHOIS on that domain name. If you get their home address or email, then you can Google the email address and see if they've been posting on forums... you can get all kinds of personal info. Using the address you can get their property tax info from their appraisal district. You can probably do even more, like if they're a registered voter, but I think that was enough to make my point. In fact, the spammer I exposed a few days ago appears to have changed the WHOIS contact info to a business address. I can only hope I instigated the change. Heh.