LJ just had a release, and somewhere in the stuff that went on, some changes were made to LJ's login cookie such that LJLogin, the amazingly popular tool for, well, logging you in to LJ, broke.

(For those who are saying "Hey wait, why not log in using username and password like the rest of us?", you are probably not the target audience for LJLogin. The target audience is from what I gather mainly roleplayers, who can easily have dozens of accounts, any five or ten of which may be interacting with each other in comments, choosing a different icon for each comment, in near-real-time-IM speed. It's amazing what people can use LJ to do. The people who use LJ for this often have not just one but multiple paid accounts, because number of icons is very relevant to roleplayers.)

Deep in the comments of the most recent lj_releases entry, markf explained: "This is actually unrelated to the release, but we did make a minor change today in the way we handle cookies which has affected this plugin, and it will require the developer of the plugin to make some changes to it before it will work again. The changes made will make life significantly more difficult for automated spammers, and is something we intend to leave in place."

That, there, full stop, is why I am not going to start yelling about this. LJ has a spam problem. LJ has a major spam problem and I am pathetically grateful every time I see a report that there are changes that look to be effective in the fight. One of the major reasons I now prefer comments on Dreamwidth, and lock many entries on LiveJournal that are public elsewhere, is because of the spammers hiding in the cushions at LJ. Even knowing that this may cost LJ paying members, if this will address some of the spamming, I cannot fault them for rolling it out as fast as they could. (I do not know any of the other considerations, but faster is better when it comes to dealing with spammers.)

There is a completely hypothetical requirements-gathering session for an LJ-side login switcher. (I already checked and the previous (2010 and 2007) suggestions discussions on the topic were not helpful enough to be worth the trouble of linking there in my opinion.)

The LJLogin (Firefox) dev, slarti sounds plenty mad on the grounds that it sounds like LJ knew this would break LJLogin before it was rolled out but did not give notice, did not include the change in a numbered release so there was no mention in the release notes, made the change at the same time as a numbered release which made it less obvious to the external observer what was going on, and has not made the actual nature of the changes easy to track down. The dev of LJ Juggler (Chrome) also joins the thread.

I am sure it could have been handled more gracefully, but I'm still willing to extend LJ the benefit of the doubt and hope that the next time something comes up that will affect legitimate users using mostly a single third-party tool, that they take the time to notify the maintainer of that tool as a courtesy. (It is much easier for me to feel this placid generosity of spirit now that, in the words of james_nicoll "I do not personally have a squid in this fight".)

I hope things improve for everyone, except for the spammers. Those can go crawl off a cliff or something. I don't like spam.

• 08:08 omfg my sleep schedule is messed up. It is bedtime. I just woke up. Clearly this is not good for a workday. I sense a nap in my future. #
• 10:13 There are now five of you with the default Twitter pic. This is confusing. #
• 10:23 Bizarre moments from work from the past several weeks: acid-free almonds! (apropos of some of the tripped-out customer emails.) #
• 13:03 @llbbooks you there? ZOMG PLOTTING #
• 14:01 OK! Aunt has been emailed. Contemplating taking an extra 2 days for the family thing, even, maybe. Will check with work. I have the time. #
• 19:11 Dear Congressman Shadegg: your "telephone town hall" is my unwanted automated call, to my cellphone, while I'm asleep. DO NOT WANT. #
• 19:29 Oh gods. My Nemesis a) is going to be at a social event at which I will be, and b) uses inappropriate reply-all. Rethinking event. #
• 20:06 @tangowildheart see, if Twitter were Facebook, one of them *could* smack you with something. #
• 20:06 Which leads me to imagine that a Twitter pillowfight would be an altogether obnoxious meme for observers, but hilarious for participants. #
• 20:11 @llbbooks *lobs a hot pink and very fluffy pillow at you* #
• 20:12 @tangowildheart *counters with a navy blue body pillow, wielded like a bat* #
• 20:22 @llbooks I have 2 pillows like that. One is fuzzy and one is not. #
• 20:33 bad spam offers to "upsize [my] sex pen1s today" ... yes, because I would have separate ones for sex vs. other were I male. Detachable, see. #
• 20:35 @gameboyguy13 Hooray for lemons! Are the flowers pretty too? #

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Dear Lady Malfoy,

Why must you read every single spam e-mail you get? I can sort through the ones that are Definitely Spam from the sender and subject. There are some that are a little dubious, yes, but there are some that are very glaringly obviously spam. So why must you read them all?

Argh,
that girl who's courting your son

mormon_slut has been banned from brightandbroke because she has been spamming up communities. To wit:

This is actually somewhat on topic here, being as it's the whole broke/money thing, but you're spamming unrelated communities (I took a look at your friendspage, missy, and classy_preps_ was not an appropriate forum for spamming up) so you're deleted as spam and banned.

I don't think she was actually a community member, so she was either a nonmember posting and we need to tighten security, or she joined and unjoined and LJ needs to fry her for spamming.

Unilever spams, incidentally. I signed up for a Ben & Jerry's newsletter, and then I got other crap in my inbox today. I only figured out the connection when I went to the website to opt out (I ordinarily don't go to the website of spammers, but the "Suave Newsletter" thing passed my legitimacy tests) and found ChunkMail on the list of potential subscriptions. I told them that whether or not it was legally spam, it was still morally spam, and I'm going to contact Ben & Jerry's very much with the irate.

[Update: Some ChunkMail subscribers got other newsletters in error. A tasty coupon is to be posted to me. Well-handled. Hooray!]

I e-mailed the abuse department of the college webspace of the spammer, expecting little better than a "Sorry, we can't babysit these little twits," in two to three weeks from the person monitoring that address, if I got anything at all.

This is (roughly) the e-mail I sent (edited for identity, of course, because I'm not THAT mean...)

Subject: Harboring a Spammer
Dear Wrangler of College Brats,

One of your little darlings, user [link to user's webspace], has been spamming up LiveJournal with some "get free stuff" type deals, the sort where you get ten friends to sign up too and then get some free cool stuff. They are using the account [LJ name], which has been reported to LiveJournal for flagrant abuse of the service & being a general crackhead.
[explanation of links to specific instances of user spamming, followed by links.]
I realize that there may not be much you can do about their activities on LiveJournal, but if they're splashing that much crap around on LJ, they may also be abusing your e-mail system with more of the same.

Cheers,
JL, moderator of [community]

I sent that out at Gawdawful AM. About an hour ago, their abuse department lit up my inbox.

Joanie,

The user has been notified of this complaint and the content has been removed from our webserver. Thank you for notifying us of this problem; we take these reports seriously. Please email us if you encounter any similar problems from users on our network. Additionally, I have to say that your email had very unique, humorous language. Thanks for the kick.

Regards,
[name, rank, serial number]

It looks like I was right on in my discussion with wibbble (who was also taking similar action against said spammer): I was the one who thought that the Geek in Charge of Punk College Kids' Web Access would appreciate a little snark from someone who's got a bit of an idea what s/he's up against. Given what kellinator has to say about the punk kids in the college library she works in, snark is one of the things that makes the world keep spinning when the brats look like they're about to take over.

"Throw it to her from the next room"??

That had better be a cheap dog toys spam ad.