So I’m trying out a new anti-spam combination:

1. Re-captcha
2. Akismet

If you have any problems with the CAPTCHA software, just reload the image or try the audio option. What I like most about the re-captcha system is that it doesn’t dump your post if you don’t get the CAPTCHA right. I tried another implementation a while back that did this, and got several emails threatening my safety.

Another cool thing about the re-captcha system is that every time you use it you’re helping a good cause. The re-captcha system is part of a project to digitize books, which is done using OCR software. Well, when the computer has a problem reading in a given piece of text it needs a human to help determine what the word is.

That’s what this system does — it’s using us to identify what the computer couldn’t do. And that just happens to be a good way to also keep those same words from being easily guessed by a computer. Or, to put it another way, if the words were easily guessed by computers (hence making a CAPTCHA text) they wouldn’t be in the system in the first place. Pretty cool.

Anyway, spam seemed to be picking up quite a bit recently and I needed to switch tactics due to the overhead of managing it. Let me know if this is unbearable, however, and I’ll adjust as necessary.

I wrote recently about learning to differentiate between blogspam and self-submitted content on meritocracy-based sites like Digg and Reddit. My goal was to try and reverse the negative programming we all have towards reading self-submitted material. I attempted to do this by showing how it differs from spamming — which is taking someone else’s writing and submitting it from your site to try and steal ad traffic.

But even more important than asking readers to appreciate self-submitted content is the call for people to write and submit their own. Nothing limits the quality of what we read more than the idea that it’s socially unacceptable to self-submit.

There are thousands upon thousands of good writers out there — people who could be improving the quality of what we see here everyday. But we won’t ever experience what they have to offer because there’s nobody to bring it to our attention. What are the odds that their stuff is going to be randomly “discovered”? Not good. The only only option is for them to drop the socially ingrained false-modesty and present it themselves.

Remember that writers submit their work to publishers; they don’t wait for it to be found. Artisans have shows and invite lots of people, and academics submit to their respective journals. In short, submitting original content for peer review is crucial in any community that values intellectual progress.

So to all of you who think you have something to offer — show us. Getting someone else to submit it for you is more shady than doing it yourself, and it’s not going to be discovered on accident. If you’re doing anything to increase your chances of being seen (SEO, word-of-mouth promotion, etc.) you’re already playing the system. Accept this and have the balls to submit your own material if you think it’s worth reading.

The filter for good content on these sites is the voting system, not the source of the article. The approach that is best for the community is to get as much content into the system as possible and allow the voting to work for us. We cannot afford to discourage high-quality writers with foolish source-based filtering.

If we as readers want superior content then we need become part of the solution. That means 1) appreciating quality writing even when it’s submitted by the author, and 2) creating and submitting our own material without fearing the stigma of self-promotion.:

[ Edited ]

Ok, so someone stole my lsof article the other day, took a screenshot of it, and posted it to Digg without crediting me.

I got angry and belligerent.

It appears the guy was not actually a spammer but instead just an uninformed soul with no grasp of netiquette. Although it does seem like just basic moral instincts would tell someone that what he did was wrong.

Either way, no hard feelings. The guy seems new to things. If he learned a lesson then that’s cool (although an email from would be nice).

Fin.

Bacn is an unwanted byproduct of the Web2.0 craze. It’s all the email that you get as notifications and updates that would have been spam if you hadn’t actually requested it.

It’s email you want - but not right now.

[ Bacn ]

Here it is with no frills:

1. Buy stock in a small, obscure company.
2. Launch a brutal spam campaign that hypes said company.
3. Watch the stock rise.
4. Cash out.

More here.

Dear Reddit Team,

As you will no doubt have already noticed, this link does NOT reside on reddit.com, despite it appearing like it did on the website.

This means that people are currently able to post links to any domain they want and make it look like it came from the reddit domain (see image below).

(clearly not the case)

I’ve sent you (the Reddit team) an email through the feedback function and will be happy to show you how I did it (assuming you don’t already know) as well as offer any other assistance.

Kind regards,

– Daniel Miessler E: daniel@dmiessler.com W: http://dmiessler.com G: 0xD4A8FFF6

[Edit] I haven’t heard from the reddit team and someone’s figured it out in the comments, so I’ll go ahead and mention it here. The problem is that all links on the reddit page don’t point to the real destinations, but rather to reddit-homed redirects for the purpose of counting clicks. This means that when you submit something, reddit makes a nice reddit-based link to any domain you submit. If you then submit THAT link you reproduce the effect.

I think one solution would be to place the target domain in the reddit-created link so that it can be filtered when people submit links that point to the “reddit” domain. So:

-- if link points to reddit.com check to see target domain if not reddit.com drop input else let it through --

[Edit 2] The reddit team finally contacted me and acknowledged the bug, so I removed my story from the site. I find it commendable that they didn’t remove the link themselves; and they didn’t even ask me to do so. Kudos to reddit.:

Nothing is worse for systems like Digg and Reddit than repetitive, mediocre content. These networks are designed to magnify the efficiency of the Internet by taking excellent content — regardless of source — and promoting it through impartial democracy.

Ultimately, the goal is to minimize the time it takes someone to get up to speed on the most original/interesting content within a given area of focus, be it technology, politics, or whatever. When done correctly, the concept is quite beautiful.

Spamming vs. Contributing

The system breaks down horribly, however, when these communities fail to understand the difference between submitting original content and blogspamming. Many are confused about what blogspamming actually is: it’s not posting a link to something on your own blog or website (if it’s decent and original, that’s called “contributing”). Blogspamming is actually very specific (I had the Digg staff spell it out for me) — here are the requirements:

1. Find interesting content somewhere on the Internet
2. Post that content on your own website
3. Post the link to your website rather than the original source

This is blogspamming, and it’s every bit as evil as people make it out to be. But it should not be confused with people posting their own original content. That practice, i.e. sharing ideas, is what makes the Internet so wonderful.

The Idea Bazaar

When it comes to sharing ideas, the Internet should be viewed much like a traditional, open marketplace — where people bring the artwork, pottery, clothing, woodwork, etc. for public review. It’s like open-mic night in front of billions of people.

Hello, everyone. Here’s a short story I just finished. I hope you like it…

This is what the Internet is about, and I think Digg, Reddit, and their successors should be more open to this philosophy. We shouldn’t penalize people for offering their own original content to the world just because they submitted it themselves. It’s far more genuine to do that, after all, than to artificially manufacture a third-party submission (which so many people do).

Remember that writers submit their work to publishers; they don’t wait for it to be found. Artisans have shows and invite lots of people. Academics submit to their respective journals. In short, submitting original content for peer review is an absolute must in any system that values intellectual progress.

Communities that rely on a constant flow of quality content need to adopt a mantra of judging offerings based on only two things: originality and merit. Any would-be resource that fails to grasp this concept (or later forgets it) is doing its users a disservice by discouraging would-be contributors from participating.:

So I just added some more RBLs to my Postfix configuration and cleaned out my spam directories. I’m going to see if adding this additional layer will make any significant difference.

I’m trying out some new techniques for filtering spam. Relaying through Gmail is fairly effective, but it deeply offends my sense of simplicity to use two (2) Linux accounts and bounce through Google in order to get a message.

The technique I am trying now is FAR simpler and shows much promise. It’s working for a lot of other people so I’m optimistic. We’ll see how it goes. This post will serve as the implementation marker.

Summary of Techniques

1. Greylisting
2. Quality Checks
3. ** Relay through Gmail.
4. Spamassassin

Oh, and if you are trying to send me mail and not seeming to get through after these changes, do let me know. This solution may take some tweaking.

[Edit: 11.23.06] Results have been sub-optimal. Within a few hours Gmail had already caught a couple of emails that were not stopped by the initial reject technique. So I’ve put Gmail back in the loop and now things seem to be working great. Let me know if any of you are having trouble sending me mail.

Some well-meaning, albeit uninformed soul (who just got Dugg) came up with what he believes to be a great way to combat spam. The idea is to “bounce” the spam messages back to the spammer — presumably so that you don’t exist.

Interesting. So the best technique for fighting spam is to send a message to the spammer saying,

Hi, this is a valid email address (they can tell it’s not a real error). Do me a favor and don’t spam me. Oh, and one more thing — don’t spam me using the address I’m sending this from.

Outstanding. I’ve got another great idea: let’s make a list of dates of birth and social security numbers to put online that’s part of a “Identity Theft Prevention List”. This way the identity thieves can have one place to go to ensure they don’t steal the identity of someone who doesn’t want theirs stolen.

Use some logic, people. If they were willing to spam you the first time, do you really think they’re going to stop because you ask them to? Here’s another stellar crime fighting technique: go up the the friendly neighborhood rapist and say,

Hey, do me a favor, don’t ever come to 135 Elm Street where my wife’s often home alone while I’m on business. M’kay? Thanks.

Genius.

** It’s not quite this bad since it’s made to look like an error rather than a reply, but to a spammer this is a trivial obfuscation. Things like the time the spam was sent vs. the time it was bounced (as well as mail headers) illustrate very clearly whether something was actually bounced or was made to look like it did. Spammers tend to react negatively to the latter. Plus, a good portion of spam comes from spoofed addresses anyway, and responding just clogs bandwidth and freaks out the spoofed users. Don’t waste your time.