Destroy all Malware

Word Blacklists

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 16:24:49 GMT

In order to stop comment SPAM, the best technique IMHO is to implement a word blacklist. Here's a sample blocklist that I use for all my blogs. When choosing words to blacklist, don't pick everyday words or you'll end up with zero comments. SocialTwister made exactly this mistake. They block words, like fund, fun, feed, fed and almost everything else. Try commenting on this blog, it's quite funny. I tried for several minutes and wasn't able to even get simple sentences past their comment SPAM filter. Unsubscribed.

Three More Spammers Canned

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 04:43:02 GMT

David Utter: Federal prosecutors in Phoenix have won indictments against three people accused of violating the CAN-SPAM Act.

Splog Reporter

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 17:10:44 GMT

About: Splog is a terrorist to our blogosphere and needs to be stopped. This site was created for "good willed" bloggers to report splog in an effort to help to clean up the blogosphere of splog.

http://www.splogreporter.com

Blogspot: More Spam Than Anything Else

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 16:09:23 GMT

Philipp Lenssen: 30 bad ones out of 50 overall – that makes it around 60% spam on Blogspot. Google itself shows there are around 7,500,000 pages hosted on Blogspot. If we extrapolate the number, we might estimate Google is hosting 4 million spam pages.

http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-08-29-n40.html

b2evolution SPAM Filter

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 16:33:48 GMT

It would seem that sometime in the last month, the kbcafe.com domain was placed on b2evolution's blacklist. I sent an email directly to the b2evolution team and they told me that one person had reported kbcafe.com and since only one had reported kbcafe.com, they immediately removed my domain from the blacklist. They also gave me the name and email address of the person who blacklisted my domain. I sent this person an email asking why he had done this. He said that I was sending referrer SPAM his way. We emailed back and forth and it became pretty evident that this was a overzealous teen who didn't really understand what he was doing. This seems an awful shortcoming of the b2evolution blacklist, that anybody may submit any domain without reason or proof.

My Big Brother Google

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 16:12:47 GMT

Cory Doctorow: The first search result for a Google search for Boing Boing is listed as "boingboing.net/". If you hover your mouse over the link on the results page, the status-bar in your browser displays the link URL as "http://boingboing.net". However, if you right-click on the link and copy the link location, it is revealed to actually be "http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1& url=http%3A//boingboing.net/&ei=U4gJQ6_fBqKiQevXjYIO" (it will probably be a slightly different URL for you).

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/22/google_stealthily_mo.html

Randy: This is a form of URL injection and Link Hijacking. These techniques can be used maliciously. Although not malicious, what Google is doing is less than ethical and should be stopped.

International Database Poisoning Day

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 15:41:03 GMT

Cory Doctorow: The BugMeNot people are calling for an International Database Poisoning Day this November 13, and are collecting pledges to register an account with fake details at one of several major, registration-required news websites.

http://www.petitiononline.com/adwakeup/petition.html

Spam Dealer gets Year in the Can

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 23:37:29 GMT

Jason Lee Miller: US District Court judge sentenced [Jason Smathers] to a year and three months in prison. Smathers, a software engineer, admitted to stealing 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses and then selling them to spammers. Spammers sent out up to 7 billion emails thanks to Smathers' help.

Zobot Worm

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 05:30:49 GMT

Greg Sandoval: A computer worm unleashed over the weekend infected more computers on Tuesday that run Microsoft operating systems, with Windows 2000 users most seriously affected.

A splog here, a splog there

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 03:38:25 GMT

Mark Cuban: Whats a splog ? A splog is any blog whose creator doesnt add any written value.

http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000870054492/

Randy: I guess most linkblogs also qualify as splogs. I don't think Mark gets it, but it's good to see someone with visibility talking up the issue of blog SPAM.

Mark Cuban: If blogging is supposed to be a personal medium, I dont know why we cant use an email confirmation for blog posts. We do it for comments to keep out comment spam. Why not do it for blog posts?

Randy: Let me get this straight. When I ping IceRocket, I'm gonna get an email with a link that I need to click to validate the ping. At which point, most of us will stop pinging IceRocket. I'm sure Sifry (the competition) likes this idea!

Got One

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 04:26:20 GMT

Microsoft settles with ex-spammer

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 12:07:44 GMT

Reuters: Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that it has settled a lawsuit against Scott Richter, whom it identified as a former "spam king." The company added that as part of the settlement, Richter and his company agreed to pay $7 million to Microsoft. [cut] The company will reinvest all of the money -- including $5 million that will go to increase Internet enforcement efforts and expand technical and investigative support to help law enforcement address computer-related crimes.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/09/technology/microsoft_spam.reut/index.htm

Nassau blames spam on Wang

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 04:21:23 GMT

Newsday: For the past two days, legislators' computers have been inundated with identical e-mails, arriving every 10 seconds in batches of about 100 -- asking lawmakers to vote yes on Wang's proposed Lighthouse project. [cut] The e-mails urge legislators to approve a lease with Wang, owner of the Islanders hockey team, to redevelop the county-owned Nassau Coliseum. [cut] The Islanders Web site offers free hats to fans who e-mail their support of the Lighthouse project.

Top Ten Email Marketing Trends

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 03:42:58 GMT

eInfo: ExactTarget released their updated Top Ten Email Marketing Trends.

Relevance is king!
Email is a retention tool, not an acquisition tool.
Data appends can be used to enrich customer data
Test and optimize your emails
Controlling corporate spamming
Leverage transactional emails
Create one-to-one relationships
Measure results with multi-channel analytics
Integrate customer data
Email only when you have something to say

http://einfo.blogspot.com/2005/08/top-ten-email-marketing-trends-mid.html

Randy: In short, don't SPAM.

Disable All Popups in Firefox

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 17:11:31 GMT

Pete Bevin: It turns out that some clever people figured out that you could launch popups from Flash, getting around the Firefox default settings. Fortunately, you can get around it:

Type about:config into the Firefox location bar.
Right-click on the page and select New and then Integer.
Name it privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins
Set the value to 2.

The possible values are:

0: Allow all popups from plugins.
1: Allow popups, but limit them to dom.popup_maximum.
2: Block popups from plugins.
3: Block popups from plugins, even on whitelisted sites.

http://www.petebevin.com/archives/2005/03/10/firefox_popups.html

Court OKs Blocking of Unsolicited E-Mails

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 16:47:30 GMT

AP: The University of Texas didn't violate the constitutional rights of an online dating service when it blocked thousands of unsolicited e-mails, a federal appeals court panel ruled Tuesday.

Gangs Behind Most Spam

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 05:57:39 GMT

ConsumerAffairs: IBM says hackers today have a different motivation -- profit.[cut] Believed to be largely driven by criminal gangs, “phishing” was tied to 35.7 million emails in the first half of 2005.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/cgi-bin/news/news.cgi?id=4492073281

Claria Works to Change Adware Image

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 20:34:31 GMT

BetaNews: The company [Claria] is also working hard to mend relations with sites who may have shunned it in the past, as well as reaching out to advertisers who refused to place their ads on Claria's pop-up services.