Crenk » spam

Facebook and Twitter to Fight SPAM… again

Dean Sherwin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:51:56 +0000

SPAM is one of my pet hates. In fact I think that everyone reading this hates those annoying e-mails, comments left on our pages, tweets and clearly misleading advertisements that promise you a months salary in a few hours. I really, really hate SPAM. It’s useless and in this day and age it achieves nothing with its instantly recognisable language format, strange links and oh yeah, the promise of a few million bucks for transferring money.

Twitter and Facebook hate SPAM too. At the same time, both of them published posts to their blog that clearly announce plans to go on the offensive against spammers on their networks.

Twitter is due to start crating tweets and organising the trending topics section. This could mean one of two things:

Either they’ll simply remove an entire trending topic if it becomes too spammed.
Or they’ll painstakingly monitor tweets in trending topics with the first filter being a computer and the last a human.

They told us that the changes may not be apparent immediately – but I can assure you, it’s happening as you read this post.

Meanwhile, Facebook are targeting SPAM and scam ads on their network. This is a really big problem for two reasons. Firstly it lets users make their own ads and publish them – with so many it’s hard to catch all the scams. And secondly, they’ve gotten into bed with some shady advertising networks recently and are having a spot of bother breaking the relationships. Although they have assured us they’re in the process of ending two of them.

Let’s all pray for a SPAM free Internet in the mean time.

Google Wave Federation Begins Testing – Start of SPAM

Dean Sherwin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:20:59 +0000

Google Wave has not been a big hit so far – everyone though it would be…but it hasn’t. The interface is complicated, buggy and unpractical. People aren’t staying long enough to build a community and worst of all – nobody is quite sure what exactly it’s for yet. However the development team are still making strides.

They have just opened up Wave to third party companies by releasing an API package. This allows companies to host their own Wave like services on their own servers and interact with other companies API Waves. This is currently only in sandbox testing and isn’t live on the internet as of yet.

One thing which concerns me is that this could mean the start of SPAM on Wave. Since its launch people have been confined to specific waves but now we’re seeing a growth in access. Although this growth isn’t enough to start a spamming campaign it could be the start of it. I’m pretty sure that soon the hackers and spammers will descend on Google Wave – then it’s up to Google to stop them on a platform which will supposedly be more open than e-mail.

Spam Increased 141%

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:50:55 +0000

Spam levels have increased in the last few months, since March more precisely, in a 141% said McAfee Threat Report from Second Quarter in 2009. The main reason resides in another increase: botnets (infected computers used for spamming and other attacks) up to 16%. Need an explicit number? That translates in 117 billion spam emails every day.

The number that is quite disturbing as well, is the botnets that are currently infected: 14 million computers. 150k every day, that represent 20% of all the computers that are acquired every day. And these botnets and zombies they are not only responsible for most of the spam, also they generated other attacks like denial-of-service to the White House, New York Stock Exchange and South Korean government web sites.

About South Korea, that’s the country that increased the most in the botnet activity, up to 45%; but yes, the US keeps in the top of that list with over 15% of the entire zombie population.

These spam numbers do not come alone, malware attacks have increased, specially the ones that infect the Windows auto-run that do not require any user intervention to “spread the evil”. That type of malware even outnumbered the Koobface or the Conflicker attacks.

This is a battle that will never end I think, I’m sure that those that depend on this kind of battles will not let it end.

What do you think?

Zumbox: Turn Your Snail Mail Green

Luis Sandoval — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:18:20 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

The world over there is a common word that we all understand when it comes to virtual messages…spam! That same concept can be related to the countless pieces of junk mail we receive in our snail mail boxes. In an attempt to curb physical mail, Zumbox was created as a way to save paper and go greener.

Zumbox is a virtual mailbox that is accessible from anywhere in the world, and all your mail can be directed to this. No major warehouses needed with hundreds of scanners, it simply takes your mail from teh database that your mail is created in and sends the file directly to your account. You can browse your mail just like you would browse it in your home after checking your mailbox.

It’s a great idea, and I’m completely behind it, but the one drawback is immersion. This concept would have to be fully accepted for Zumbox to saturate the market and reduce 100% of all physical mail. Still it’s a great start and I encourage you to at least input your address. The service is free, it’s easy, accessible, and leaves less of an imprint on the planet then all the junkmail you receive. With special filters, reduced junk mail, checking your “mail” may actually be fun again…save for the bills.

MyBuxNetworks: Is This The Worst Ad Network You Have Ever Seen?

Steven Finch — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 09:46:26 +0000

I received a very interesting email this morning from a new advertising network called MyBuxNetworks.com. They are offering a CPM and a CPC solution with also a referral option. The network seemed interesting in the email, however it was a totally different story when I took a look at their website.

The site itself looks terrible and so amateuristic. However, that was the worst thing I saw on the site. Check out the video I have attached below, which is from a “member”. Would you go on this guys word?

Disclosure: Im CEO of Adphilia which is a site representation company.

Did You Pass Math? A Simple WordPress Comment Anti-spam Plugin

Mike Panic — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:05:44 +0000

For nearly the last two years I have been blogging, writing nearly a thousand articles. Lots of time, energy and creativity go into these words I write, and I publish them in the hopes that others will not only read them, but enjoy them, apply them and leave comments or ask questions. The one evil of the Internet is Spam though, and over the last few years Spam bots have been attacking blogs like no other. This is partly due to the number of new blogs being created.

The problem is comment spam. These are comments that are left on articles that usually point to some website that tells you how she’d like you to be thicker and longer lasting, or how to find a great deal on your next new car. Nothing of value, in face, these types of comments detract from the credibility of your content and worse, possibly lead to your readers leaving from clicking on a bogus link. There is help.

Shortly after one particular article got bombarded with tons of traffic from several social bookmarking and networking sites at once, the comment spam started to roll in. Using WordPress, my preferred platform for blogging, I set out to find some sort of Captcha system to add to blog posts to help cut down on the spam. Generally speaking, I don’t like anything that interferes with a users experience, but this plug-in is a must have.

Did you pass math? adds a small math question to the bottom of your comment box, above the submit button. It prompts the commentator to do a very simple math equation, like 7+3= [fill in the answer]. The plug-in can be found here: http://www.herod.net/dypm/ – and while it hasn’t been updated in two years, I don’t see that as a problem, it simply works. To install it, simply download to your computer from their site, unzip the files and upload [via FTP] two PHP files (English is default, but support is there for dozens more). Login to the admin section of WordPress, activate the plugin and you are done.

Since installing the Did you pass math plug-in, my comment spam has been near completely eliminated. As an added bonus, there was zero negative feedback and no backlash from the my readers after installing. Some even thanked me for not using a true Captcha system, since they can often be very hard to read. My suggestion would be to install this when first setting up a blog, so you aren’t in a situation like me, trying to fix a broken problem while it is being broken even harder.