Nano Spam

First of all, I want to express my sincere regrets for the annoying/disgusting/objectionable (choose your adjective) porn spam posts that have been plaguing our comment boards. All the ones I could find have been removed.

Second, I'm not sure what the cause was (whether the timing and announcement of my short absence from moderating had anything to do with it) or what the cure is, but I will certainly look into it.

Third, let's all remember that Internet spam is just a small taste of what could become possible when programming matter becomes as easy as programming data!

Note: I'm still in California, just concluding a wonderful Foresight Senior Associates Gathering, and this is the first chance I've had to check our blog since Thursday night. I'm flying back to New York tomorrow, so if any more of this junk gets posted in the meantime, I'll clean it out when I return. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Mike Treder

Comments

[Brett Bellmore]

And it begins again...

[Janessa Ravenwood]

Regulatory question: should it be a crime to send killer nanobots to shred the servers spammers use? Show of hands here? :-(

[christianhauck]

It is really getting interesting here. Real pain (and porn spam is a weak form of pain) feels different from the inside. It's not like just talking about it. And reactions like anger, right for a revenge, shame (have I caused a problem for other people?) come up.
From a perspective of, let's call it "ecological emergence", spam makes sense. If there is an environment where such a "thing" can survive, it may emerge. And it does not exist because it is "good", it exists because it came into existence and because it survives.
Back to responsible nanotechnology. We do care about what's "good". And we have many opportunities to shape the conditions for the future (which we don't know, of course). That's the point. We don't influence the "things", but we influence their environment in which they develop, survive - or not.
And: spam does not kill us. And I don't belive in grey goo.

[Mike Treder, CRN]

UPDATE from our blogging service...

TypePad vs. Comment Spammers

Recently we added some simple tests that eliminate a large amount of comment spam on TypePad blogs. According to our logs, most spammers try to cover their tracks by sending their posts through an "Open Proxy Server".

An Open Proxy Server is a misconfigured or infected machine that forwards web requests for anyone on the entire Internet. The spammers use these proxies to avoid the one commment-per-minute restriction and the Blog Owner's IP address blocking.

So, we started blocking Open Proxies -- all 1.5 million of them. It immediately reduced the comment spam problem. In fact on our first day it blocked over 20,000 spam attempts!

While effective, these open proxy checks are not always perfect. If our server thinks your machine is an open proxy it will display an error message when you try to post:

"Your comment has not been posted because the computer you are using appears on a list of machines exploitable by spammers."

If this happens don't panic, it's possible that a virus or malware installed an open proxy on your computer. Run a scanner from a trusted vendor, such as Trend Micro's HouseCall to rid your computer of open proxies and virus infections.

When you are confident your machine is secure you can remove the blocks. You can do this by visiting the web sites mentioned on the TypePad error message you received when you tried to post.