Check out this New York Times story on a successful spammer and how he's trying to figure ways around the new Can Spam Act. Chilling. (Here's a link to the congressional bill.)
As the laws change to prohibit email spamming and as the technologies and procedures adapt to confront them, I can better understand why this blog and many others are being challenged by the spammers. If blogs continue to increase in popularity, so too may the spamming--especially as spam marketers look for ways around the new email spam laws. Coordinated efforts--not simply the vigilance of a blogger checking their comments--are going to make the difference.
In a sense I've been surprised how civil and relatively non-commercial comments are on blogs. I get about five to ten spam posts every day or so. I'm sure a more popular blog would must be inundated with spam posts.
One solution is to turn off comments. In some ways this is not a bad idea. Another could be to run all comments through email--since email is being better protected legally and technologically by the ISPs. Maybe weblogs could be modified to only accept comments emailed to a Hotmail account, for instance, that leverages its spam detection technology. Actually, I'm not sure if this would work. Plus I doubt it would stop a spammer running overseas anyway.
Posted by Loren at January 1, 2004 08:41 AMI don't see comments on weblogs being a good target for spam.
The general premise behind spam is that you can need to send a ton of it. Since e-mail facilates sending large volumes, you can freely send millions of messages. Even when the response rate is 1/10 of a percent, that's still pretty good!
Unless, and until, weblogs have automated systems for posting comments, I don't think comment spam will ever be a problem.
Posted by: Tim Marman on January 1, 2004 05:27 PMMovable Type is standard and prevalent enough to attract them... it Seems
Posted by: thadk on January 1, 2004 07:09 PM