Wednesday, October 26, 2005
CAPTCHA Bugs
I have not experienced the Word Verification CAPTCHA for posting yet, but in commenting I have seen it plenty of times. I don't have any trouble reading the text, but I am still getting them wrong way too often lately. I am not the only one, Diane commented at fightsplog.com that she is having trouble too.
CAPTCHAs certainly aren't all that clear on purpose. They have to distort the text to attempt to defeat automated programs from solving them and allowing the spam through. It is assumed that humans (as long as they aren't visually impaired, which is an even worse problem) should be able to do a better job reading the distorted letters than a computer. Most of the time that is correct, but obviously not always.
I think making the image bigger might be of some help. Maybe get rid of some of the less clear fonts. I have been experimenting with some just now and I can't seem to find one that I can't solve, but this morning I was having trouble. Maybe it wasn't an unclear text problem but a software problem and Blogger fixed it.
Since it is so easy for a human to fail the test, how can they really stop spammers? Some of the images are far easier to solve than others. If a spammer program just keeps trying it will get a simple one it can solve. Hopefully it is enough of a deterrent to make spammers go somewhere else, but it is not fool proof and spammers can be stubborn.
So here are some examples from Blogger's Word Verification. How readable are they?
Anyway, why call it Word Verification? They aren't words.
Another problem with the new system it that bloggers who use external software like w.blogger or BlogJet to post can't post if their blog requires a CAPTCHA. That is something that I am sure will be worked out. The software designers will probably need to give a way for users to see and solve the CAPTCHA. I know people are annoyed by this, but spammers use software to spam so they can't just continue the way things were. Blogger is working on ways for you to become verified after solving the CAPTCHA a number of and likely some other criteria. Be patient. The splog problem on Blogspot was so bad solving it had to be a priority.
Update: Some of the problem with external posting software seems to be a bug that is already being worked on. See the BlogJet blog.
Update 2: Blogger Buzz has some info on what they are doing to fix the external blog editor problems.
CAPTCHAs certainly aren't all that clear on purpose. They have to distort the text to attempt to defeat automated programs from solving them and allowing the spam through. It is assumed that humans (as long as they aren't visually impaired, which is an even worse problem) should be able to do a better job reading the distorted letters than a computer. Most of the time that is correct, but obviously not always.
I think making the image bigger might be of some help. Maybe get rid of some of the less clear fonts. I have been experimenting with some just now and I can't seem to find one that I can't solve, but this morning I was having trouble. Maybe it wasn't an unclear text problem but a software problem and Blogger fixed it.
Since it is so easy for a human to fail the test, how can they really stop spammers? Some of the images are far easier to solve than others. If a spammer program just keeps trying it will get a simple one it can solve. Hopefully it is enough of a deterrent to make spammers go somewhere else, but it is not fool proof and spammers can be stubborn.
So here are some examples from Blogger's Word Verification. How readable are they?
Anyway, why call it Word Verification? They aren't words.
Another problem with the new system it that bloggers who use external software like w.blogger or BlogJet to post can't post if their blog requires a CAPTCHA. That is something that I am sure will be worked out. The software designers will probably need to give a way for users to see and solve the CAPTCHA. I know people are annoyed by this, but spammers use software to spam so they can't just continue the way things were. Blogger is working on ways for you to become verified after solving the CAPTCHA a number of and likely some other criteria. Be patient. The splog problem on Blogspot was so bad solving it had to be a priority.
Update: Some of the problem with external posting software seems to be a bug that is already being worked on. See the BlogJet blog.
Update 2: Blogger Buzz has some info on what they are doing to fix the external blog editor problems.
How Not To Fix The Blogspot Issue
Mitch Ratcliffe is promoting solving the splog problem by doing enough AdSense click fraud on blogspot splogs that Goolge takes some action. It seems to me that Google is taking action. I guess Mitch thinks since they haven't instantly solved the problem they aren't doing anything. Google is far from solving the problem, but they are doing something.
Mitch's plan relies on a bunch of people going to splogs and clicking on their ads as a "political action." To Mitch it is not click fraud since it is not their own sites. Not many agree on that. But anyway, it is not going to go very far. Most people not smart enough to realize it is click fraud will be too lazy to take part in any combined effort to punish a tiny portion of sploggers by giving them more ad revenue.
The rest of this post is in reply to Mitch's comments on Toivo's post at FightSplog.com. It got so long I decided to make it a post on its own.
As Toivo mentioned, Mitch appears to be confusing splogs with comment and trackback spam. If you are going to come out with THE solution to spam on the internet you should know what you are talking about and be clear.
Mitch says he want Google to fix Blogspot's spam problem. Blogspot's problem is fake blogs (splogs) setup by spammers to increase the PageRank of their actual sites. Yet Mitch also says:
"Fully 40 percent of my traffic each day is sploggers trying to post to my site—because I restrict the number of comments and trackbacks every few minutes much of the time even the sploggers get shut out, but so do legitimate commenters and trackbacks."
Comment spam and trackback spam don't automatically mean splogs or sploggers. Some sploggers may also send out trackbacks and comment spam, but that is not the real problem of splogs. The problem is splogs are filling up search results with garbage or stolen content making it hard to find what you are looking for. Since splogs are not intended to get good PageRank there is little need to comment spam for them. Splogs are the spam, designed to increase the PageRank of the spammer's main site just like comment spam tries to do.
Splogs are just a new form of spamdexing which has been around for many years and Google is constantly improving their algorithms to filter it out. The problem is that just because Google cleans them out of its index doesn't make them go away. In the case of splogs at Blogspot, Google can actually delete them. But there is nothing stopping spammers from creating splogs on other free hosts or their own sites. It is just convenient for now to create them on Blogspot. Spammers have been creating fake content pages for years. The reason people outside the antispam community finally took notice recently is because a few big name bloggers noticed that their content was being stolen and used for the fake content of splogs.
Most splogs have AdSense ads, but that is just because it is convenient and might make a bit of money from a few human visitors that run across the splog. Any revenue they make from it is nearly 100% profit, so why not? But AdSense is not the point of splogs and if AdSense didn't exist splogs still would with or without advertising from some other company.
Mitch isn't seeing the bigger picture though.Google is making money off of every splog that had AdSense on it, if they shutdown a splog and don't give the spammer the money, where does that money go? What is worse than the AdSense problem, all these splogs and other junk pages are filling the internet with junk. Google is getting good at weeding out that junk from their search results. It is a never ending battle though since spammers keep adapting. Google's competition is much further behind. If users get tired of the spam filled results of other engines that is good for Google. Google has little incentive to actually solve the internet wide splog problem.
But they couldn't solve it even if they wanted to. Google could shutdown AdSense right now and it would have no effect on splogs, comment spam, trackback spam, or referrer spam. Google could also stop using PageRank or any other link based ranking and it would have no effect on web spam either. As long as search engines exist web spam will exist. Other than using their algorithms to filter out sites that are spam there is nothing more Google can do (outside of cleaning up Blogspot).
Mitch's plan relies on a bunch of people going to splogs and clicking on their ads as a "political action." To Mitch it is not click fraud since it is not their own sites. Not many agree on that. But anyway, it is not going to go very far. Most people not smart enough to realize it is click fraud will be too lazy to take part in any combined effort to punish a tiny portion of sploggers by giving them more ad revenue.
The rest of this post is in reply to Mitch's comments on Toivo's post at FightSplog.com. It got so long I decided to make it a post on its own.
As Toivo mentioned, Mitch appears to be confusing splogs with comment and trackback spam. If you are going to come out with THE solution to spam on the internet you should know what you are talking about and be clear.
Mitch says he want Google to fix Blogspot's spam problem. Blogspot's problem is fake blogs (splogs) setup by spammers to increase the PageRank of their actual sites. Yet Mitch also says:
"Fully 40 percent of my traffic each day is sploggers trying to post to my site—because I restrict the number of comments and trackbacks every few minutes much of the time even the sploggers get shut out, but so do legitimate commenters and trackbacks."
Comment spam and trackback spam don't automatically mean splogs or sploggers. Some sploggers may also send out trackbacks and comment spam, but that is not the real problem of splogs. The problem is splogs are filling up search results with garbage or stolen content making it hard to find what you are looking for. Since splogs are not intended to get good PageRank there is little need to comment spam for them. Splogs are the spam, designed to increase the PageRank of the spammer's main site just like comment spam tries to do.
Splogs are just a new form of spamdexing which has been around for many years and Google is constantly improving their algorithms to filter it out. The problem is that just because Google cleans them out of its index doesn't make them go away. In the case of splogs at Blogspot, Google can actually delete them. But there is nothing stopping spammers from creating splogs on other free hosts or their own sites. It is just convenient for now to create them on Blogspot. Spammers have been creating fake content pages for years. The reason people outside the antispam community finally took notice recently is because a few big name bloggers noticed that their content was being stolen and used for the fake content of splogs.
Most splogs have AdSense ads, but that is just because it is convenient and might make a bit of money from a few human visitors that run across the splog. Any revenue they make from it is nearly 100% profit, so why not? But AdSense is not the point of splogs and if AdSense didn't exist splogs still would with or without advertising from some other company.
Mitch isn't seeing the bigger picture though.
But they couldn't solve it even if they wanted to. Google could shutdown AdSense right now and it would have no effect on splogs, comment spam, trackback spam, or referrer spam. Google could also stop using PageRank or any other link based ranking and it would have no effect on web spam either. As long as search engines exist web spam will exist. Other than using their algorithms to filter out sites that are spam there is nothing more Google can do (outside of cleaning up Blogspot).
Sunday, October 23, 2005
PRStorm and Google
And made an interesting discovery since lately our interest in PRStorm/Reffy, one of the worst referrer spam programs around, has been renewed. Michael Pollitt got some info about the new owner. He says he didn't know what he was buying. I still find that hard to believe. Ann has her own comments on the situation.
So while investigating Ann ran across one of Google's many dirty secrets. This one being that even a domain that is removed from Google's search index for being a horrible spammer can buy AdSense ads. This is just one more bit of evidence that Google either looks the other way or isn't trying very hard to stop spammers.
But that is nothing compared to Google's AdSense spamdexing service where they provide the spam for you.
It seems Google's motto has changed to "Don't be evil (unless it makes lots of money)."
So while investigating Ann ran across one of Google's many dirty secrets. This one being that even a domain that is removed from Google's search index for being a horrible spammer can buy AdSense ads. This is just one more bit of evidence that Google either looks the other way or isn't trying very hard to stop spammers.
But that is nothing compared to Google's AdSense spamdexing service where they provide the spam for you.
It seems Google's motto has changed to "Don't be evil (unless it makes lots of money)."
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Advanced Wiki Spam
Today the chongqed wiki had the first big spam attack in a long time. Actually I had even been missing the small time spammers attempts until yesterday.
RichardP and I both noticed the spam attack about the same time. As I went to lock the wiki, he set WikiMinion cleaning. Turns out all I blocked was WikiMinion, the spammer had already moved on.
When I got around to looking at the attack more carefully I realized this spammer's program is more advanced than usual. Most of the pages spammed were newly created by him. But he was not just making up random page names or using his own keywords like most wiki spammers do. Every new page name he used was on topic for our wiki.
The secret is that each of those page names had been linked to from one of our pages. Some were spelling mistakes, many are just automatic CamelCase links, others were links expecting to later become pages but never did. He had to have crawled a large portion of the site to come up with all these page names.
When I first saw only a couple edits at the top of the page and the new page names seemed on topic I briefly wondered if we had a new contributor. Scrolling down a bit solved that quickly. That is kind of sneaky, but not really effective especially since he over did it (22 spams). It would only work on an abandoned wiki where you can makeup any page names you want. So good job on making spamming advances in an area that doesn't matter.
But the spamming software and its designer were also pretty stupid. He thought he was being smart by hiding his edits by making another edit (from a different IP address) blanking the page while logged in as if he was a legit user cleaning up the spam. Pretty sneaky if it wasn't so retarded, apparently he missed the spammer classes on meta nofollow, noindex. Older revisions don't show up in search engines and thus do spammers no good on modern wikis.
And he also is trying to hide his spam with the CSSHiddenSpam trick which doesn't work on our kind of wiki.
Here is the spam (including tabs):
I am glad he hit us because now he is in our blacklist where he belongs. According to Google, there are already 151,000 pages that have "coolhost.biz" on them. He has been busy.
If this is advanced wiki spam, I say keep up the good work idiots!
RichardP and I both noticed the spam attack about the same time. As I went to lock the wiki, he set WikiMinion cleaning. Turns out all I blocked was WikiMinion, the spammer had already moved on.
When I got around to looking at the attack more carefully I realized this spammer's program is more advanced than usual. Most of the pages spammed were newly created by him. But he was not just making up random page names or using his own keywords like most wiki spammers do. Every new page name he used was on topic for our wiki.
The secret is that each of those page names had been linked to from one of our pages. Some were spelling mistakes, many are just automatic CamelCase links, others were links expecting to later become pages but never did. He had to have crawled a large portion of the site to come up with all these page names.
When I first saw only a couple edits at the top of the page and the new page names seemed on topic I briefly wondered if we had a new contributor. Scrolling down a bit solved that quickly. That is kind of sneaky, but not really effective especially since he over did it (22 spams). It would only work on an abandoned wiki where you can makeup any page names you want. So good job on making spamming advances in an area that doesn't matter.
But the spamming software and its designer were also pretty stupid. He thought he was being smart by hiding his edits by making another edit (from a different IP address) blanking the page while logged in as if he was a legit user cleaning up the spam. Pretty sneaky if it wasn't so retarded, apparently he missed the spammer classes on meta nofollow, noindex. Older revisions don't show up in search engines and thus do spammers no good on modern wikis.
And he also is trying to hide his spam with the CSSHiddenSpam trick which doesn't work on our kind of wiki.
Here is the spam (including tabs):
As you can see, he also has missed the concept of keywords. But I needed something for the database and WTHP doesn't seem that important of a keyword. So looking at his site I choose to chongq him for DVD.
<div id="wikitikitavi" style="overflow:auto; height: 1px; ">
[[http://WTHP1.coolhost.biz] [WTHPD1]]
[http://WTHP2.coolhost.biz WTHPD2]
[[http://WTHP3.coolhost.biz | WTHPD3]]
[http://WTHP4.coolhost.biz | WTHPD4]
[WTHPD5 | http://WTHP5.coolhost.biz]
[[http://WTHP6.coolhost.biz WTHPD6]]
</div>
I am glad he hit us because now he is in our blacklist where he belongs. According to Google, there are already 151,000 pages that have "coolhost.biz" on them. He has been busy.
If this is advanced wiki spam, I say keep up the good work idiots!
Friday, October 21, 2005
Email Scammers
I found on Slashdot an article about some Nigerian 419 email scammers at the LA Times titled "I Will Eat Your Dollars."
In other Nigerian news, InformationWeek reports Nigeria To Outlaw E-Mail Spamming. I am sure that will solve the problem.
In other Nigerian news, InformationWeek reports Nigeria To Outlaw E-Mail Spamming. I am sure that will solve the problem.
Blogger Hacks
BlogFresh is just full of great stuff, especially their series on Blogger hacks.
Blogger Templates has a bunch of new Template designs for use with Blogger. And in their sidebar they have a few good hacks to improve your blog like the ability to Edit Comments and show a Previous Post link.
Browservulsel has lots of useful hacks, especially if you are a Greasemonkey user.
This one isn't a hack, but you probably don't know about it. You can now get backlinks for your blog. They are done with Javascript and come from Google's Blog Search so the usual fake trackback and referrer spam won't be a problem. See Blogger's page on using them.
Blogger Templates has a bunch of new Template designs for use with Blogger. And in their sidebar they have a few good hacks to improve your blog like the ability to Edit Comments and show a Previous Post link.
Browservulsel has lots of useful hacks, especially if you are a Greasemonkey user.
This one isn't a hack, but you probably don't know about it. You can now get backlinks for your blog. They are done with Javascript and come from Google's Blog Search so the usual fake trackback and referrer spam won't be a problem. See Blogger's page on using them.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Halloween Music
For years I had looked for good spooky music for Halloween. Most of the stuff you find in stores has too many odd sound effects or is Monster Mash type stuff. I just want creepy background music.
A few years ago I finally found one I liked and have been using every year since. It is called Pumpkinland. Now there are two sequels. From the samples of the sequels I think I still like the first one best, but the others are good too.
The title track of the first CD is my favorite. It and Creature often alternate most of Halloween night. Pumpkinland 2 and Creep from the second CD sound pretty good too so I think I am going to have to order that so I can have a bit more variation.
The other tracks on the first two are good, but not quite what I am looking for. The third CD is heading further away from what I want, but it might be just what you are looking for.
You can hear all the samples at 13th Track Halloween Radio.
A few years ago I finally found one I liked and have been using every year since. It is called Pumpkinland. Now there are two sequels. From the samples of the sequels I think I still like the first one best, but the others are good too.
The title track of the first CD is my favorite. It and Creature often alternate most of Halloween night. Pumpkinland 2 and Creep from the second CD sound pretty good too so I think I am going to have to order that so I can have a bit more variation.
The other tracks on the first two are good, but not quite what I am looking for. The third CD is heading further away from what I want, but it might be just what you are looking for.
You can hear all the samples at 13th Track Halloween Radio.
Leaving Blogger
I am not leaving, but that is what some of those affected by yesterday's Word Verification (CAPTCHA) problems have been saying. So what? Blogger isn't really going to be hurt if a few of you stop using their FREE service. This was a bug that was fixed relatively quickly. Get over it.
Blogger may not be the best blog host, but it is a pretty good one. It has its problems, but what service doesn't? Hosting your own blog would always give you far more control and options since you can have many choices of blog software. But then you have to worry about upgrades and constant referrer spam attacks. And it isn't free. Hosting your own blog is a good thing for many people, but it is not for everyone.
Some complaints have said that Google is worse than Microsoft. Microsoft has done far worst to its customers. Not being able to blog for a day is much less critical than missing your email which Hotmail occasionally has trouble with, sometimes for longer periods than this. No online service is working 100% of the time and bug free.
If you are getting a CAPTCHA before posting, Blogger is not censoring you or saying you are running a splog. They know some innocent blogs are getting them and are working to reduce the number affected. The system is automated and will never be perfect. That is why they use the CAPTCHA rather than just blocking the posting. Read my post from yesterday that mentions some reasons why your blog might have this problem and possibly ways to work around them.
While I don't like CAPTCHAs because they are annoying and inaccessable to the visually impared, this is a good thing for the Blogger service. I don't want to have my blog on a service that is so full of splogs that no one takes anyone here seriously. If Blogger didn't start doing something radical that would happen real soon. This was a good step in reducing the problem, but I hope they have a lot more planned because Blogger's splog problem is far from solved.
Blogger has posted more information on their fix here.
Blogger may not be the best blog host, but it is a pretty good one. It has its problems, but what service doesn't? Hosting your own blog would always give you far more control and options since you can have many choices of blog software. But then you have to worry about upgrades and constant referrer spam attacks. And it isn't free. Hosting your own blog is a good thing for many people, but it is not for everyone.
Some complaints have said that Google is worse than Microsoft. Microsoft has done far worst to its customers. Not being able to blog for a day is much less critical than missing your email which Hotmail occasionally has trouble with, sometimes for longer periods than this. No online service is working 100% of the time and bug free.
If you are getting a CAPTCHA before posting, Blogger is not censoring you or saying you are running a splog. They know some innocent blogs are getting them and are working to reduce the number affected. The system is automated and will never be perfect. That is why they use the CAPTCHA rather than just blocking the posting. Read my post from yesterday that mentions some reasons why your blog might have this problem and possibly ways to work around them.
While I don't like CAPTCHAs because they are annoying and inaccessable to the visually impared, this is a good thing for the Blogger service. I don't want to have my blog on a service that is so full of splogs that no one takes anyone here seriously. If Blogger didn't start doing something radical that would happen real soon. This was a good step in reducing the problem, but I hope they have a lot more planned because Blogger's splog problem is far from solved.
Blogger has posted more information on their fix here.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Blogger Bugs Me
There are a few things that have bugged me about blogger for a long time. And this post isn't even about all their poor spam prevention.
First and most stupid, why can't they add a couple words to the spell checker dictionary. Words like Google, Blogger, Blogspot, and even blog keep coming up as misspelled. The Learn button seems to do nothing, I have hit it quite a few times on those words.
The second one is more annoying for readers of my blog. Sometimes, for no reason, my blogs Atom feed switches to the short version. I would rather let readers read the whole posts in their feed reader. Just republishing again usually fixes that, but I can only fix it if I notice.
Third is, the frequency publishing my blog posts comes up with an error. How hard is it to update some files? Republish Entire Blog is even worse. That often doesn't work on the first, second, or third try. My blog isn't even really that big. I can't imagine how much trouble those with tons of posts must have.
And how about fixing the Manage Posts page for Firefox. At least 80% of the time I go to that page it loads ok and then the blue Edit buttons grows to take up most of each row. That is not very usable. You can only read a word or two from the post's title. How am I supposed to manage anything that way. Sometimes if I refresh the page enough it will work right eventually.
And last, I guess is kind of spam related. Allow us to delete multiple comments easier. If a spammer or wacko comment bombs me I want be able to wipe them out in one quick action. The current method is ok for deleting one or two comments, but when you have 50 comments across multiple posts it would be a pain to cleanup.
Ok, so that wasn't the last one. How about preventing people from comment bombing? It shouldn't be hard to tell something is wrong when someone is posting more than a couple comments in short period.
Wow, this post just keeps going. How about a way to mark comments as spam and help prevent other blogspot users from being spammed by the same comment? That seems like something technology borrowed from Gmail might be able to accomplish.
First and most stupid, why can't they add a couple words to the spell checker dictionary. Words like Google, Blogger, Blogspot, and even blog keep coming up as misspelled. The Learn button seems to do nothing, I have hit it quite a few times on those words.
The second one is more annoying for readers of my blog. Sometimes, for no reason, my blogs Atom feed switches to the short version. I would rather let readers read the whole posts in their feed reader. Just republishing again usually fixes that, but I can only fix it if I notice.
Third is, the frequency publishing my blog posts comes up with an error. How hard is it to update some files? Republish Entire Blog is even worse. That often doesn't work on the first, second, or third try. My blog isn't even really that big. I can't imagine how much trouble those with tons of posts must have.
And how about fixing the Manage Posts page for Firefox. At least 80% of the time I go to that page it loads ok and then the blue Edit buttons grows to take up most of each row. That is not very usable. You can only read a word or two from the post's title. How am I supposed to manage anything that way. Sometimes if I refresh the page enough it will work right eventually.
And last, I guess is kind of spam related. Allow us to delete multiple comments easier. If a spammer or wacko comment bombs me I want be able to wipe them out in one quick action. The current method is ok for deleting one or two comments, but when you have 50 comments across multiple posts it would be a pain to cleanup.
Ok, so that wasn't the last one. How about preventing people from comment bombing? It shouldn't be hard to tell something is wrong when someone is posting more than a couple comments in short period.
Wow, this post just keeps going. How about a way to mark comments as spam and help prevent other blogspot users from being spammed by the same comment? That seems like something technology borrowed from Gmail might be able to accomplish.
CAPTCHA Trouble
This is a test of the emergency blogcast system. This is only a test. In the event of a real emergency you would not be able to post to your blog.
Oh wait, it seems we are in a splog emergency, maybe this is not a test. Some people aren't able to post to their blogs. There seems to be trouble with Blogger's new splog solution. Splogger, oops, I mean Blogger, decided that for blogs it thinks are sploggy it will pop up a CAPTCHA (Word Verification) before allowing the blog owner to post. Now maybe that isn't such a bad idea if you can live with the fact that CAPTCHAs are not accessible to the visually impaired, but there seems to be a bug.
A number of people have posted in SplogFighter's comments that even once they have entered the correct word they still can't post to their blog. Some of those blogs look awful spammy to me, but the CAPTCHAs should work.
Anyway, didn't Blogger say yesterday that CAPTCHAs were not the answer?
I can think of a few ways blogs can be used that would look quite spammy. Some use a separate blog as a place to dump interesting links rather than their main blog. Some entire blogs are mostly links and a couple comments about them. That can look pretty spammy especially if you link to the same sites over and over. In that case your blog may look spammy to whatever method they are using to detect spam, including human review. Hopefully any humans Blogger has in the review process are at least as experienced identifying splogs as us antispammers, but who knows.
My suggestion is to do something to make your blog stand out from the splogs. Take a look at some splogs and you will notice what characteristics your blog shares with them. Perhaps like mine, you have a sidebar full of junk linking to a small number of sites. It could also be the overloading of AdSense. If you have more ads than content you probably are running a splog, or at least it looks like you are.
Well, since my blog has many spammy characteristics, lets see if I can post this without seeing a CAPTCHA.
Update: I was lucky, no CAPTCHA.
Update 2: Blogger has updated the post announcing this new feature admitting there is trouble for some users. They plan to have a fix shortly.
Update 3: It appears it is fixed now.
Oh wait, it seems we are in a splog emergency, maybe this is not a test. Some people aren't able to post to their blogs. There seems to be trouble with Blogger's new splog solution. Splogger, oops, I mean Blogger, decided that for blogs it thinks are sploggy it will pop up a CAPTCHA (Word Verification) before allowing the blog owner to post. Now maybe that isn't such a bad idea if you can live with the fact that CAPTCHAs are not accessible to the visually impaired, but there seems to be a bug.
A number of people have posted in SplogFighter's comments that even once they have entered the correct word they still can't post to their blog. Some of those blogs look awful spammy to me, but the CAPTCHAs should work.
Anyway, didn't Blogger say yesterday that CAPTCHAs were not the answer?
I can think of a few ways blogs can be used that would look quite spammy. Some use a separate blog as a place to dump interesting links rather than their main blog. Some entire blogs are mostly links and a couple comments about them. That can look pretty spammy especially if you link to the same sites over and over. In that case your blog may look spammy to whatever method they are using to detect spam, including human review. Hopefully any humans Blogger has in the review process are at least as experienced identifying splogs as us antispammers, but who knows.
My suggestion is to do something to make your blog stand out from the splogs. Take a look at some splogs and you will notice what characteristics your blog shares with them. Perhaps like mine, you have a sidebar full of junk linking to a small number of sites. It could also be the overloading of AdSense. If you have more ads than content you probably are running a splog, or at least it looks like you are.
Well, since my blog has many spammy characteristics, lets see if I can post this without seeing a CAPTCHA.
Update: I was lucky, no CAPTCHA.
Update 2: Blogger has updated the post announcing this new feature admitting there is trouble for some users. They plan to have a fix shortly.
Update 3: It appears it is fixed now.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Comment Spam
Since I post a lot of links to FightSplog I wanted to point out something since some visitors to that blog are concerned by the amount of comment spams. He purposely does not clean spam from his comments.
I don't either, but I use Blogger's Word Verification CAPTCHA that cuts down on most spam. He doesn't believe using them. I think they are bad too, but I would rather not have my comments overloaded with garbage.
Spamming antispam blogs is pretty stupid and we like to point that out by example. Any spammer who is expecting PageRank from comment spamming Blogspot has no clue what they are doing. Blogspot uses nofollow tags on links in comments.
But of course, spammer stupidity was an expected limitation of nofollow's usefulness. I was excited when it was first announced, but quickly realized it wasn't really going to solve anything. Spammers are too stupid and lazy to care.
But for a normal blog you should not leave spam comments even though they aren't benifiting the spammer. Spam attracts spam, so if you don't clean the little you get now you are going to get a lot later.
I don't either, but I use Blogger's Word Verification CAPTCHA that cuts down on most spam. He doesn't believe using them. I think they are bad too, but I would rather not have my comments overloaded with garbage.
Spamming antispam blogs is pretty stupid and we like to point that out by example. Any spammer who is expecting PageRank from comment spamming Blogspot has no clue what they are doing. Blogspot uses nofollow tags on links in comments.
But of course, spammer stupidity was an expected limitation of nofollow's usefulness. I was excited when it was first announced, but quickly realized it wasn't really going to solve anything. Spammers are too stupid and lazy to care.
But for a normal blog you should not leave spam comments even though they aren't benifiting the spammer. Spam attracts spam, so if you don't clean the little you get now you are going to get a lot later.
Blogger: On Spam
Blogger has solved the splog problem! They posted to their blog about splogs. Now they can move on to ignoring them again.
Basically it says, yeah its a problem and we will see if we can do something about it, but its not our fault. And just like most spam friendly hosts, they emphasise that "even if spam were completely solved on Blog*Spot, there would still be a problem." So what? Do your part! Being the top search engine and a major blog host, that part should be pretty big.
Well, their post did list one thing they are actually doing, they are now going to be offering a list of deleted subdomains, which has been asked for by many. But isn't the solution to prevent them from being created in the first place?
FightSplog has some comments which at least for the moment the top post linked to in that post's "Links to this post."
Chris Pirillo also made it to that list with his 10 suggestions for Google. But don't forget FightSplog made some of the same ones last month.
Update: This post made it to the top of that list for a bit too. So looking at the list more carefully, it is done using Javascript and some server side stuff. They are just backlinks, nothing special. I assumed there would be more people who posted about this "announcement" so the list would be longer if it was just backlinks, but apparently not at the time I read it.
Anyway, this method of listing backlinks is interesting. It should be relatively spam proof since the backlinks come from Google's Blog Search. It is available for all Blogspot users, you just have to turn it on.
Basically it says, yeah its a problem and we will see if we can do something about it, but its not our fault. And just like most spam friendly hosts, they emphasise that "even if spam were completely solved on Blog*Spot, there would still be a problem." So what? Do your part! Being the top search engine and a major blog host, that part should be pretty big.
Well, their post did list one thing they are actually doing, they are now going to be offering a list of deleted subdomains, which has been asked for by many. But isn't the solution to prevent them from being created in the first place?
FightSplog has some comments which at least for the moment the top post linked to in that post's "Links to this post."
Chris Pirillo also made it to that list with his 10 suggestions for Google. But don't forget FightSplog made some of the same ones last month.
Update: This post made it to the top of that list for a bit too. So looking at the list more carefully, it is done using Javascript and some server side stuff. They are just backlinks, nothing special. I assumed there would be more people who posted about this "announcement" so the list would be longer if it was just backlinks, but apparently not at the time I read it.
Anyway, this method of listing backlinks is interesting. It should be relatively spam proof since the backlinks come from Google's Blog Search. It is available for all Blogspot users, you just have to turn it on.
Monday, October 17, 2005
WP-TEMPLATEOFTHE.N SITTINGBOURNE
Yesterday I noticed an odd charge on my credit card bill. It was listed as WP-TEMPLATEOFTHE.N SITTINGBOURNE for $8.27. After a little Googling, the only hit I found lead me to a few other people that got the same charge.
One of them figured out that there is a company that sells "web design templates" that goes by the name "Template Of The Net" located in Sittingbourne, Kent. And it just happens that you can get 2,000+ Templates for $8.27.
I did not buy a web template and have never heard of Template Of The Net before. Anyone that knows me would be able to tell that I don't need to buy a template to build a webpage.
I do use my credit card online, but mostly only at large trustworty sites. About a month before this charge I did purchace a screen saver online from a smaller company that I don't know much about. I am not accusing the screen saver company (that is why I didn't name them), but wondering if any others who have had this problem also bought a screen saver recently. The site looks totally legit and has lots of users and a forum run by fans on a seperate site so I may be barking up the wrong tree. But other than that I don't have a clue.
I use Firefox and am careful what I download so I don't believe it is was from spyware. I don't run SpyBot often because I never find anything on my machine, but just in case I ran it just now. Guess what, nothing.
I also used that credit card at a couple of cheep motels a bit further back. Could be an employee got the numbers back then.
Watch your credit card bills, even for small charges. My credit card company took the charge off my account with no problems. And I canceled the card right away. From now on I am only using my other very low limit card on websites I don't know enough about.
One of them figured out that there is a company that sells "web design templates" that goes by the name "Template Of The Net" located in Sittingbourne, Kent. And it just happens that you can get 2,000+ Templates for $8.27.
I did not buy a web template and have never heard of Template Of The Net before. Anyone that knows me would be able to tell that I don't need to buy a template to build a webpage.
I do use my credit card online, but mostly only at large trustworty sites. About a month before this charge I did purchace a screen saver online from a smaller company that I don't know much about. I am not accusing the screen saver company (that is why I didn't name them), but wondering if any others who have had this problem also bought a screen saver recently. The site looks totally legit and has lots of users and a forum run by fans on a seperate site so I may be barking up the wrong tree. But other than that I don't have a clue.
I use Firefox and am careful what I download so I don't believe it is was from spyware. I don't run SpyBot often because I never find anything on my machine, but just in case I ran it just now. Guess what, nothing.
I also used that credit card at a couple of cheep motels a bit further back. Could be an employee got the numbers back then.
Watch your credit card bills, even for small charges. My credit card company took the charge off my account with no problems. And I canceled the card right away. From now on I am only using my other very low limit card on websites I don't know enough about.
Splog Sunday
SplogFighter has another great post on the splog situation. It seems the reason we are suddenly hearing from lots of high profile bloggers is because of one spammer who went nuts creating splogs and spamming on Sunday. According to SpamFighter, that spammer alone created three times the usual daily number of splogs in one day.
IceRocket vs. Google Splogs
Thanks to Google's (almost non-existant) efforts to stop spam on Blogspot.com, IceRocket has temporarily stopped indexing blogs on Blogspot. Last night Mark Cuban said this is because some spammer just started using a script that "could easily turn into 10s of THOUSANDS of blogs pinging out millions of posts!" It seems that Blogger should be able to easily filter these out before being created.
Isn't it nice to have your blog on a service so full of crap.
I ran across this news from FightSplog.com. He also points out that major bloggers are getting after Google for the splog problem again. Splog news seemed to die down for a bit and then so did Google's minimal efforts to prevent them. So now people are noticing the huge splog problem again.
The other FightSplog, like me, is a victim of being hosted on Blogspot. He has been reporting tons of splogs to Google and has some observations. Google does not appear to be removing splogs on their own anymore. They will usually clean them if someone sends in a report or maybe if enough people flag a splog. But if they have any tools to find and remove splogs they aren't working.
After saying some bad stuff about Blogspot, Chirs Pirillo of Lockergnome actually got a response from Google. Somehow he expects we will see results on this real soon.
But as I have posted about before, why would Google want to solve the splog problem anyway. All they need to do is not rank them high in their search index and let all the other search engines deal with them. Any search engine that can't handle the huge amount of spamdexing crap will drive away users. And where they will go for searches next, to the biggest supporter of splogs, Google.
Update 5:20pm: It seems that IceRocket's block of Blogspot didn't last very long. This post is now in IceRocket's index. I think they should have left it on for a bit. Google/Blogspot's splog problem needs more publicity.
Isn't it nice to have your blog on a service so full of crap.
I ran across this news from FightSplog.com. He also points out that major bloggers are getting after Google for the splog problem again. Splog news seemed to die down for a bit and then so did Google's minimal efforts to prevent them. So now people are noticing the huge splog problem again.
The other FightSplog, like me, is a victim of being hosted on Blogspot. He has been reporting tons of splogs to Google and has some observations. Google does not appear to be removing splogs on their own anymore. They will usually clean them if someone sends in a report or maybe if enough people flag a splog. But if they have any tools to find and remove splogs they aren't working.
After saying some bad stuff about Blogspot, Chirs Pirillo of Lockergnome actually got a response from Google. Somehow he expects we will see results on this real soon.
But as I have posted about before, why would Google want to solve the splog problem anyway. All they need to do is not rank them high in their search index and let all the other search engines deal with them. Any search engine that can't handle the huge amount of spamdexing crap will drive away users. And where they will go for searches next, to the biggest supporter of splogs, Google.
Update 5:20pm: It seems that IceRocket's block of Blogspot didn't last very long. This post is now in IceRocket's index. I think they should have left it on for a bit. Google/Blogspot's splog problem needs more publicity.
Top Links on Bloglines Are Spam
I don't use Bloglines, but I learned about this from Nick. He has been posting a bunch about spam and splogs lately. His post says "Two out of the top five most popular links on Bloglines are spam sites linked to by spam blogs." The ones he mentions are gone now since his post is a couple weeks old, but there are still some fishy looking pages at the top of the list.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
FBI Raids Spammer
Slashdot posted that the FBI raided the home of a spam king and seized equipment. It appears the warrant is based on the CAN-SPAM act. Maybe it isn't as useless as it seemed. But Ralsky's lawyer claims he complied with laws and they have never been interpreted by any courts. A good ruling here could really give CAN-SPAM some backbone. It will never stop spam, but at least it restricts what spammers can do legally.
If you read the Slashdot comments you will see why spam is such a big problem. About half the comments are supportive of this. But the other half is for any number of reasons not against spammers. Some think that think the FBI is wasting its time going after just one spammer. Others think that they shouldn't be going after spammers at all.
Then there are those who whine that it is the buyer's fault for supporting the spammers. That is true, but we know that isn't going to stop. The return on spam is already very low, but since sending spam is so cheap even a few sales can make a profit. Blaming the buyers is not going to solve anything. I wish they would be smart enough not to, but it isn't their fault they are stupid.
Some even think there is nothing wrong with spam. One said he doesn't get much spam at all but admitted he uses two spam filters. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean you aren't getting it. It is a waste of bandwidth and a waste of time for those who don't have good spam filters.
If half the audience of Slashdot thinks spam is not a real problem, how is it ever going to be solved? These are the more technology literate people that should be able to see the problem.
If you read the Slashdot comments you will see why spam is such a big problem. About half the comments are supportive of this. But the other half is for any number of reasons not against spammers. Some think that think the FBI is wasting its time going after just one spammer. Others think that they shouldn't be going after spammers at all.
Then there are those who whine that it is the buyer's fault for supporting the spammers. That is true, but we know that isn't going to stop. The return on spam is already very low, but since sending spam is so cheap even a few sales can make a profit. Blaming the buyers is not going to solve anything. I wish they would be smart enough not to, but it isn't their fault they are stupid.
Some even think there is nothing wrong with spam. One said he doesn't get much spam at all but admitted he uses two spam filters. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean you aren't getting it. It is a waste of bandwidth and a waste of time for those who don't have good spam filters.
If half the audience of Slashdot thinks spam is not a real problem, how is it ever going to be solved? These are the more technology literate people that should be able to see the problem.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Spyware Illegal Trespass
USA Today has a story about about laws finally catching up with spyware:
"A federal trial court in Chicago has ruled recently that the ancient legal doctrine of trespass to chattels (meaning trespass to personal property) applies to the interference caused to home computers by spyware. Information technology has advanced at warp speed with the law struggling to keep up, and this is an example of a court needing to use historical legal theories to grapple with new and previously unforeseen contexts in Cyberspace."
Read the rest at USA Today.
Hopefully laws against link spam will be next. I doubt it will stop the spam since the wonderful CAN-SPAM act was useless for stopping email spam, but at least then spammers won't be able to keep claiming their crap is not clearly illegal.
"A federal trial court in Chicago has ruled recently that the ancient legal doctrine of trespass to chattels (meaning trespass to personal property) applies to the interference caused to home computers by spyware. Information technology has advanced at warp speed with the law struggling to keep up, and this is an example of a court needing to use historical legal theories to grapple with new and previously unforeseen contexts in Cyberspace."
Read the rest at USA Today.
Hopefully laws against link spam will be next. I doubt it will stop the spam since the wonderful CAN-SPAM act was useless for stopping email spam, but at least then spammers won't be able to keep claiming their crap is not clearly illegal.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Google's Spamdexing Service
You would think Google is fighting spam any way possible. Well, as Splog Fighter has pointed out, that may not be true. They appear to only fight spam really hard when it isn't making them lots of money.
The worst example of this is their AdSense for domains service. There they will set you up with the usual spamdexing ad page to "maximize revenue on parked pages." Their page even shows you a nice example screen shot of the spamdexing page they will provide. It looks just like the small (or fake) search engines many spammers setup.
The requirements for the service include that your parked domain must get at least 750,000 page views per month. Seems like that should be an oxymoron, parked domain and 750,000 page views just can't go together right? Well apparently they do for the "over 3 million domain names" powered by Google's spamdexing service.
Google has little incentive to fix the spam problem which we now know they support in multiple ways. They just have to deal with better than the other search engines. That way people will get tired of spam filled search results and turn to the only alternative, the Google monopoly.
I admit, I like Google and many of their services, but I think their "Don't be evil" motto may be slipping. How can running a spamdexing service not be evil? How can supporting spammers with AdSense not be evil? And isn't promoting domain parking evil in the first place?
I don't think that Google is going to stop their spamdexing service any time soon, but people should know about it. Most of their revenue comes from ads and it seems likely a large portion of that is generated by spammers. The only chance this will go away is if advertisers realize too many of their ad impressions are comming from junk pages. I wouldn't want to advertise a legitimate business on a junk parked page full of ads. The problem is many people don't understand that these kind of pages are junk.
I have to thank Ralph for pointing out the parked domain service in the comments on Splog Fighter's recommendations for Google.
Now, if my blog disappears suddenly, you know what probably happened. I doubt Google would do it, but just in case, chongqed.org would let you know where I end up.
The worst example of this is their AdSense for domains service. There they will set you up with the usual spamdexing ad page to "maximize revenue on parked pages." Their page even shows you a nice example screen shot of the spamdexing page they will provide. It looks just like the small (or fake) search engines many spammers setup.
The requirements for the service include that your parked domain must get at least 750,000 page views per month. Seems like that should be an oxymoron, parked domain and 750,000 page views just can't go together right? Well apparently they do for the "over 3 million domain names" powered by Google's spamdexing service.
Google has little incentive to fix the spam problem which we now know they support in multiple ways. They just have to deal with better than the other search engines. That way people will get tired of spam filled search results and turn to the only alternative, the Google monopoly.
I admit, I like Google and many of their services, but I think their "Don't be evil" motto may be slipping. How can running a spamdexing service not be evil? How can supporting spammers with AdSense not be evil? And isn't promoting domain parking evil in the first place?
I don't think that Google is going to stop their spamdexing service any time soon, but people should know about it. Most of their revenue comes from ads and it seems likely a large portion of that is generated by spammers. The only chance this will go away is if advertisers realize too many of their ad impressions are comming from junk pages. I wouldn't want to advertise a legitimate business on a junk parked page full of ads. The problem is many people don't understand that these kind of pages are junk.
I have to thank Ralph for pointing out the parked domain service in the comments on Splog Fighter's recommendations for Google.
Now, if my blog disappears suddenly, you know what probably happened. I doubt Google would do it, but just in case, chongqed.org would let you know where I end up.
AntiSpam Splog
Through Blogshares I ran across a new incomming link to my blog. The name was BlogSpam which I didn't recognize so I figured someone new getting into the fight.
There were lots of antispam and blog related posts. But as I got further down the page some of the posts looked a little odd. By the time I found the link to me I knew what was going on. This antispam blog was built by grabing posts from real spam fighter's RSS feeds.
Going back to the top to flag it I noticed the subtitle of the blog, "I set this blog up to prove that automatically created blogs DON'T have to be useless." Other than to "prove" that, I don't see any purpose of the blog. No sites appeared to be linked to an unusual number of times. I guess that avoids the splog definition. But just because it is not posting spam doesn't mean it is not useless.
So, do I think there are really any legitimate blog syndication sites? Not really. I can think of one or two more established antispam syndication sites that are more legitimate than this almost splog. But I could do without them. I guess they help get the posts seen by more people, but viewers can be confused where the posts really come from.
But in those cases the authors give permission to the syndicating site. This BlogSpam site does not ask for permission to steal people's posts.
There were lots of antispam and blog related posts. But as I got further down the page some of the posts looked a little odd. By the time I found the link to me I knew what was going on. This antispam blog was built by grabing posts from real spam fighter's RSS feeds.
Going back to the top to flag it I noticed the subtitle of the blog, "I set this blog up to prove that automatically created blogs DON'T have to be useless." Other than to "prove" that, I don't see any purpose of the blog. No sites appeared to be linked to an unusual number of times. I guess that avoids the splog definition. But just because it is not posting spam doesn't mean it is not useless.
So, do I think there are really any legitimate blog syndication sites? Not really. I can think of one or two more established antispam syndication sites that are more legitimate than this almost splog. But I could do without them. I guess they help get the posts seen by more people, but viewers can be confused where the posts really come from.
But in those cases the authors give permission to the syndicating site. This BlogSpam site does not ask for permission to steal people's posts.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Online Serenity Preview
For those I haven't yet convinced to go see Serenity, you can now watch the first nine minutes online. It is a very interesting opening, but it is more traditional Sci-Fi than the rest of Serenity. It doesn't get you into the grity Firefly universe which is what I like, but it sets up the rest of the movie really well.
Yahoo Movies currently ranks Serenity as the number one movie in theaters.
Go see Serenity this weekend!
Yahoo Movies currently ranks Serenity as the number one movie in theaters.
Go see Serenity this weekend!
Monday, October 03, 2005
More Serenity
I saw Serenity again Sunday. I can't believe how good this movie is. The friend I went with didn't know anything about Firefly and hadn't paid attention to the previews. I didn't tell him I knew anything about it already. I wanted to see his reaction not having any preconceived ideas; a movie based on a canceled TV series wouldn't normally be a good sign. He really liked it.
I didn't realize how good the space action was until the second time I saw it. The camera movement especially during the battle is amazing. It really gets you into the action. I knew it was good before, but to keep me on the edge of my seat the second time it was really good. It is very exciting.
For the opening weekend Serenity didn't do great in overall box office, but per screen it did better than the number one movie. It just wasn't on a lot of screens. It has gotten a lot of good reviews.
I hope to see it again soon.
I didn't realize how good the space action was until the second time I saw it. The camera movement especially during the battle is amazing. It really gets you into the action. I knew it was good before, but to keep me on the edge of my seat the second time it was really good. It is very exciting.
For the opening weekend Serenity didn't do great in overall box office, but per screen it did better than the number one movie. It just wasn't on a lot of screens. It has gotten a lot of good reviews.
I hope to see it again soon.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
SplogFighter's Recommendations for Google
SplogFighter posted a bunch of comments on some of the reasons behind the current splog problem and things Google needs to do to solve them. Most important, stop supporting the spammers with AdSense.
Serenity Review
My short review of Serenity:
Stop reading my blog and go see the movie right now!!!
For those that need a bit more review I could write a lot on the topic, but this is a antispam blog not a movie review blog so I will just add this:
It was especially awesome being a fan of the TV series, but I think it also makes a good stand alone sci-fi movie. It is a good bit darker than the series, but still has the humor. This movie certainly had a very satisfying conclusion for both the actual movie and the series, but there is so much more it opened up to be explored. I really hope for a sequel or two.
Now to see who else I can talk into going so I can watch it again.
Other Reviews:
Movie Reviews of 2005 #21 - Serenity
Joss Whedon Is My Master Now
Cowboys and Indians
Talk about blue hands
A Browncoat Life
Serenity
Stop reading my blog and go see the movie right now!!!
For those that need a bit more review I could write a lot on the topic, but this is a antispam blog not a movie review blog so I will just add this:
It was especially awesome being a fan of the TV series, but I think it also makes a good stand alone sci-fi movie. It is a good bit darker than the series, but still has the humor. This movie certainly had a very satisfying conclusion for both the actual movie and the series, but there is so much more it opened up to be explored. I really hope for a sequel or two.
Now to see who else I can talk into going so I can watch it again.
Other Reviews:
Movie Reviews of 2005 #21 - Serenity
Joss Whedon Is My Master Now
Cowboys and Indians
Talk about blue hands
A Browncoat Life
Serenity
