So young, so naive. A tale on spam

The effect that is described in the introduction of this insight is often referred to as "the knowing–doing gap".

To illustrate here are two examples before I start making fun of myself.

Example 1: The IT security expert

He gives a whole workshop on never reusing passwords but his Netflix, Gmail, and work accounts are all secured with the same password. Probably not "Password123" but you never know.

Example 2: The Driving instructor

Strictly enforces “hands at 10 and 2” with all students and then drives one-handed while texting his wife (don't do that) on his way home.

I like to think that I’m experienced in Drupal. Fifteen years in the game, building digital experiences for a lot of clients so I’ve seen it all (yeah no). 

I know about spam and I've fought a lot of battles with it. Every decent developer learns early on: protect your forms and guard your gates or the bots will find you. And yet Webhaven, the "big" project that I'm working on which also runs my personal website didn't have anything in place to protect me against it. Both carefully crafted and proudly launched but I left the doors wide open. It's hard to explain, I must have thought "Not me. Not here. Spam’s for other people". That’s the knowing-doing gap in action for sure. I knew better, but I didn’t do better.

So one morning I opened my inbox, rubbed my eyes, and realised the party had started without me. Bots everywhere, fake accounts and gibberish messages. Not just a little spam issue, this was a full-blown infestation.

It got so bad in that one night that my hosting provider, usually invisible in the background, actually reached out: “Uh… what’s going on over there?” That’s when you know you’ve crossed a line (and that you have a good hosting partner).

I felt so naïve. The kind of naivety that comes from assuming you’re above the obvious rules. Webhaven and my site became a perfect case study in why experience means nothing if you don’t follow through.

I cleaned it up, of course, and it took more time than just getting it right from the start.

So lesson learned here, be aware of the knowing-doing gap and act accordingly and never underestimate spam.