Technically Speaking

Well it seems like these guys have figured out a way to ruin porn online by making it a spamming tool. The only good thing is that it seems to be a Windows Internet Explorer issue for the time being.

The virtual stripper program arrives on machines that are already infected with malicious software, said Mr Genes. The program comes to life when the Internet Explorer browser is used on infected machines.

The Captcha-busting program can run on Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003.

What this means for everyone though is that the internet is going to become a smaller place before you know it. It’s bad business to have this out there, as if they can do it with a stripper, they can do it with anything.

Maybe it was only a proof of concept, and they will nail this shut as fast as it opened. Let’s all hope that is the case, but as Pandora’s box is opening once again, it will be hard to shut. It’s almost like I can actually hear some anti-porn people screaming “Praise the Lord, porn is dead online!”

So far the two security firms who have spotted the program, Trend Micro and Panda Security, have not seen many copies of it in the wild suggesting few people have been caught out.

Technically Speaking, of course porn is dead, it’s been overtaken by social networking! Where have you been?

* In the right hand corner after you hit start - you will see “1/7″ - click the right arrow to get to Episode 7!

Episode 7 notes:

Gmail and Germany - CenterNetworks

Philip at Google Blogoscoped describes the issue well:

According to this law, email services here will be forced to maintain personally identifiable records attached to email accounts.
What exactly this might mean for Google I don’t know, but perhaps it would result in Gmail having to start requiring full addresses (and perhaps even having to verify an address by sending a snail mail to the user).

Blogoscoped

As usual in these circumstances, the law is pushed through in the name of fighting “terrorists.”

Digg killed by Spam

Could this hurt the ability for Digg to continue to grow? Will Digg become basically a network of “editors” who are the power diggers deciding what goes up front? It already feels like that a bit today, what happens when the spammers put forth a full attack on Digg? Can Digg afford to have human spam removers?

71% streamed videos in March 2007

The computer appears to be well on its way toward total entertainment domination in the home. As evidence, look at new data from comScore Inc.: more than 70 percent of Internet users streamed video online in March this year. Television, movies, music and more — it’s all there in that box, awaiting full integration.

And you don’t need a heavy-duty attention span, either. The average length of a streamed video was 2.6 minutes, according to comScore.

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That is what the SPAM king looks to be getting soon. Even though he bragged about making $40,000 a week, all that spam is about to land him in the can for up to 11 years. That is a stiff sentence for spam, but could be a lesson learned for future spammers. Spam doesn’t pay. Sure, $40,000 a week if you don’t get caught. Robbing banks also can net you money per week, just don’t get caught!

Moeller was caught bragging to the informant about the money he was making: as much as $40,000 per week. Pump-and-dump stock e-mails were the most lucrative, Moeller reportedly said. With the potential profits so great and hordes of botnets available to do much of the dirty work, it’s no wonder that spammers have been largely undeterred by legislation

Technically Speaking, 11 years will prove to be a pretty long deterrent to the above spammer.

Vitale faces up to 11 years in prison when he is sentenced in September.

It is quite funny, but the more successful your blog becomes, the more spam that Aksimet catches for you. The only problem I seem to be having is that now I’m getting text message spam from Japan!

Technically Speaking, does anyone know how to block the entire dot jp domain from receiving text messages on your cell phone?

You can always write a story on SPAM. It is here to stay, and is quite a menace to our society online. What can be done about it? Well spammers are everywhere, and most are out of the jurisdicition of this country.

That brings up an even greater issue of domestic terrorism. Now you are probably saying, “Woh dude, this ain’t terrorism!” Not in the sense of a road side bomb going off, but still the same, SPAM can be terrifying in ways.

Example of that, a friend of mine gets so distraught over SPAM, he e-mails me at least once a week over it. He is terrorized, and now I am as I open up my e-mail to see another complaint of the growing SPAM in his inbox. That my friend is terrorism. They have terrified him, and I’m in turn terrorized by another “SPAM, I have it too much!” e-mail.

Technically Speaking, rex.tv is idle right now as I am not there. When I return this evening, my thought process was going like this “If there are any companies that would like product placement, then hit the form there and contact me!” Suggested product placement — Beer, soda, t-shirts, new gadget etc…

The more popular your site becomes, the more blog comment spam you receive. Sigh. I do not know what motivates these blog comment spam writers or workers. Do they get paid a tidy sum of money? I’m just wondering what motivates someone to write a spam bot or even do this by hand? I guess there a few dead blogs that get hit harder then other blogs, but if you have Akismet, blog comment spam pretty much like chewed gum. Spit to the curb and destroyed.

I’m sure your SPAM issues are nothing like TechCrunch. 15,000 SPAM per day is some serious SPAM! Then again, when your blog is cooking as hot as his blog is, that means that business is doing well. In fact, I measure my page views, uniques, and hits by the number of spam I get per day. Today (yesterday) was a good day in terms of page views, uniques, hits. I cleared out about 200 total spam from here.

Now I don’t like having to hit the spam folder here that Akismet has, but it’s a lot better then having to manually go through them. If it gets flagged, I hit the nice and easy delete all button. I don’t even bother looking. These days, it’s usually the blog post type of spam. What do I mean? Spam that is longer then my blog post! The ones that have every single offensive web site linked within them. The kind that scroll, and scroll, never to reach the end of the comment.

Worthless. That is what I say to the blog comment spammers. Why do you even bother to post such stuff? I mean, is it some sort of fun you create by seeing how your script works? Oh it works, and it’s funny as I dump all the spam into a black hole.

Technically Speaking, I am wondering now, since TC has a CEO coming on in the next few days, who will be in charge of all that spam?

I was just checking in on my old free blog that I started over on Wordpress, and killing all the SPAM comments. I was astounded that Akismet has actually killed the following.

It’s quite crazy that spammers actually think that blog comments are a great place to SPAM. Stick to the e-mail please. As the site says - “Remember the days before spam?” — we need to bring back those days!

Akismet has caught 24,607 spam for you since you first installed it. - Old Technically Speaking - the free WP site version.

Akismet has caught 589 spam for you since you first installed it. - this blog.

RD may have blogged on this subject awhile back, but hey, it is on stopping SPAM and who is not for stopping SPAM.

If you are using a live email address on your web-site and are wondering why you are getting so much Spam like I am, then take Technical Bliss’s Arpit advice. Turn your contact information into a graphic.  It looks cool and it stops the spammer programs from finding your email address.

According to this author he has received the e-mail from some of the more seedy users of MyBlogLog. I think that this issue will be taken care of shortly. In fact, I am pretty sure they are right on top of the issue. I also received the e-mail and I thought it was some sort of phishing scam. I of course did NOT click!

Technically Speaking, MyBlogLog is a great service for promoting your blog. E-mail is also a great tool for quick communication, as well as SMS, IM, etc.. etc.. It’s always the few that ruin the good of many. I believe that MyBlogLog will take care of this, and probably rather quickly.