Form Spam Blocked

As you may have noticed (all three of you regular readers), we do have a "Comments/Problem" form on our pages. It appears that that form was 'discovered' by an automated form filler program.

I've gotten two 'form spams' via that form. The message was full of random links and text; typical 'comment form' spam. The comment form is not very useful to the spammer, since the mail only goes to me, and the links are not displayed on any of the web pages here.

It was a good opportunity to try out a new spam-blocking technique for forms I found on RiaForge (an open-source community at www.riaforge.org ). A project called "CFFormProtect" does some clever things to ensure a form was filled out by a real person. It's ColdFusion-based (that's what I used to build the FileHurl site), and requires just a few lines of code added to the form page code. So I installed that this weekend.

Since I have only gotten two form spam messages here, it may be that I'll never know that it works -- although I added code there to email me if the automated guy tries again. But it was an interesting technique that will be useful as this place gets more popular and visible.

New Advertising Link

Our first affiliate advertising link is now showing up on the right side. Not too obtrusive.

And it's for a product that I can recommend (and that I use). Carbonite on-line backup makes backup copies of files on your computer automatically. It is very unobtrusive, and another layer of protection. There's lots of important files on that computer. If the computer were to 'go away' for any reason, at least the important files will be saved from loss.

Any items advertised around here will be products that I have used (or are using), and can recommend to others. Carbonite is one product that I can unconditionally recommend. I bought a copy for me, and one for my oldest daughter. After all, she's got important pictures of the grandkids to save!

Over 1GB !

Our little free file transfer site hit a major milestone! Here's the message from the home page:

"Over 349 File Hurlers have sent 1,155.85 GB of files to 466 people!"

That's right! We've helped people transfer over 1,000 GB (that's a terabyte)! And it was all free. No limits. No hidden signups required. No hidden fees. No transfer speed limits. And no complaints.

In fact, we've gotten a few "atta-boys" from satisfied users.

We haven't been "Slashdotted" yet. That will give us lots of exposure (and lots of traffic). But we think we can handle it. And even when Slashdotted, there won't be any changes in our site.

FileHurl file transfers. We are still free. We are still unlimited file sizes. We don't require any signups. And we are still fast.

FileHurl messages now contain the file name you send

I had a nice comment about this place from a FileHurler the other day. He found this place quite useful (thanks!), and suggested that the email message we send out include the name of the file. I cogitated (look it up) on that for a while, and concluded that was a pretty good idea!

The message that we send to your recipients about a FileHurl will now include the name of the file that you send. This might help the recipient verify the file you want them to have. I also suggest that you FileHurlers send a separate message about the file, so that they don't think our message is spam.

I also made some minor changes to the actual message that is sent.

Always looking for suggestions to improve this place. Use the comments here, or send a note via the "Comments" link here: http://www.filehurl.com/fh_Problem.cfm .

Thanks for stopping by! Tell your friends and cow-orkers (see Scott Adams) about this place!