How to make money on wireless ads that aren't spam

This is a really good write-up from Harvard Business School which describes how one company (FlyText) made money off of mobile text messaging without resorting to the spam tactics which clearly anger and alienate customers.

The general idea was that sending unwanted messages to users would just make them angry and defeat the purpose of what you were looking for. They worked around this by creating groups of brand loyalty who would then get text message updates about their brand ("brand" in this case surely had to be a very broad term and also include people, who are also technically brands - just not in the legal sense - they fall under the larger brand of the companies through which they work).

I find this absolutely fascinating for two reasons - both of which would make me think that this just wouldn't work at all:
1) People hate getting this sort of thing in their email.
2) I know for a fact of one desktop application which is like a toolbar and does essentially the same thing - it alerts you to things happening related to a person/brand/identity that you want updates on.

The idea is to cut through all of the clutter of email and spam these days and get out information to people that actively request it.
But the desktop thing bombed - and when these things bomb the first thing they do in order to recoup costs is to start spamming on a wide path - going against the idea of what they were originally intending to do, but desperate for cash.

So I find it very interesting that it seems to work very well with the mobile market but not with the desktops. I am curious if that is due to the nature of the desktop/wireless worlds, or if it is more of a geographical/political/cultural thing since the wireless world is extremely non-American and the desktop world is still largely American.
Perhaps this method just doesn't work well with Americans - if that is the case, I am very curious as to why that is.

Sounds like something Malcolm Gladwell would write about.

Posted by Eric at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Secure your wireless network, or it might send spam

Here is an article which talks about the need for securing your wireless network so that it isn't maliciously used to send out spam.

It raises the point that a spammer has already been arrested for doing just that - he drove around until he found open wireless networks, and then used those to send out spam. The person running the network is the one that then gets in trouble until more research is done.

If you live in an area where someone can access your signal easily (you have houses/roads nearby), then this is definitely something worth addressing. Note that even if you don't live near people, it is still feasible that someone can pick up the signal with a good antenna - but it isn't a particularly high risk (it takes knowledge, money, and the desire to do so - which doesn't mean nobody will do it, but if they aren't in your area the threat isn't terribly high - it is just a matter of whether you want to risk it).

What the article doesn't mention are those who spam and do so from their own wireless network left unsecured. Then if/when they get in trouble, they point to the unsecured wireless network and claim that it wasn't them but must have been "hackers".
I believe that falls under plausible deniability.

Posted by Eric at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How T-Mobile was hacked

Wired has an article up which mentions that T-Mobile was hacked due to them not patching a known security hole in their Weblogic application server. As far as I recall, that is a system for running Java applications, making it easier to build web applications from the front end to through to the database side - and with that you can also link to other interfaces and hardware. One of my old jobs used Weblogic for the same sort of thing.

The security hole was known and patched in 2003 and T-Mobile was negligent and left their system unpatched up until recently, which is what allowed the hacker/cracker to get in via a simple script-kiddie method (special headers).

While what the guy did was not legal, it is massively an issue that T-Mobile left their system unpatched for so long and the fact that they are responsible for so much client data - and as a result when their systems don't have the right security (as was the case here), that data can be grabbed by attackers and then used for nefarious purposes or sold to others.
This means people can spam you or far worse things such as using the data for identity theft and phishing.

This very much points to major reasons to leave T-Mobile if you are currently a customer of theirs. Granted, they should hopefully use this as a huge warning to get their act together, but large corporations move very slowly.

Posted by Eric at 10:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fighting those annoying referrer spams

Running a blog in general, but apparently especially running one which talks about spam, one gets hit with a huge amount of spam. Getting it via e-mail is not a huge deal, I am already well configured to deal with that.
But getting comment spam and trackback ping spams is hugely annoying.

The comment spam is easy enough these days, you just install MT-Blacklist and it does most all of the work for you.

With the older version, it also would handle most of the work for trackback ping spams (or at least give the illusion of doing so), but now with the newer version of it, it actually seems to be worse at it (or more honest about what it isn't doing).
But here is a write-up on how to get around that. In that particular case, it discusses various options, but seems to mostly focus on how to get them out of your log files. This is especially relevant if you make your log files open to the public, then the high referral spams will show up in there which is what they want - so you can negate that with this technique.

Posted by Eric at 10:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

FireFox security updates

Mozilla has announced that there is an updated FireFox out to fix potential security holes which spammers/phishers may try to take advantage of.

This likely is referring to the international domain name support bug (which was fixed within a day or two of its discovery) as one of the big ones.

Posted by Eric at 09:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

RSS feeds the next frontier

Silicon.com writes of a new book which claims spam via email is on the way out, and the next big thing is RSS.

The gist seems to be that it is getting harder to make money from spam, fewer click-throughs and there is a figure touted saying that only a third of email sent is even opened. It then goes on to say that RSS feeds are the next way to go.

Now I am only going by that article, I haven't read the book. But as it stands with the article, I am not sure I see how spammers are going to switch to RSS with any success at all. Don't get me wrong, I think RSS is great and we use it here at Spamblogging.
But my issue is that I am not immediately seeing how spammers are going to use it.

Perhaps there is an issue of this article confusing just "advertising" with spam. Spam is undesired advertising (which happens to usually be scams, but that is a separate issue) which is sent to an email address. The end-user has little to no ability to stop it, only to filter it. RSS on the other hand is entirely up to the end-user. It is impossible to be forced into reading an RSS feed in the way that you can be sent an email without warning. You have to manually setup your reader to get an RSS feed.
That said, if you are actively reading an RSS feed, the people publishing that can put ads in there - BoingBoing uses it or something like it.

But there is a massive difference between regular advertising like that, and spam. It is an important distinction and if you ever feel that you aren't up for that regular advertising, you always have the option to not use the service which is sending the ads to you.
Email spam doesn't give you that option - they forcibly sent the ad to you without your request.

While I very much hate spam, it bothers me even more to see people getting the terms and definitions wrong and getting bothered by advertising in general. While I am not thrilled about ads, we have them here on Spamblogging, and they are a necessary evil since pretty much everything has a cost and ads are one way to try to recover those costs.

Posted by Eric at 09:21 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

MS AntiSpyware Hoax

Microsoft has a beta AntiSpyware product out and there is a thread over at Slashdot which hints that when that software is run, it finds FireFox (a rival to Microsoft IE) as a security flaw.

That of course is not true and it is just a faked screenshot. But thanks to those who were submitting this to me as news. I have been busy (lazy) this weekend and am just now getting through it all.
Please do keep submitting interesting things though.

Posted by Eric at 07:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spam adds noise to email

For some reason this made news, the spam that people get will cause legitimate messages to be missed due to the high noise ration spam puts in their inbox.

It notes that perhaps the best way is to call the person in order to know if it got through or not.

I'm not so sure that this is all that different from regular mail. If you send me an envelope, there is a good chance it will get through to me. It might take longer than expected though. Or somewhere along the line it might get corrupted (rain makes it wet, for example). Or it could get lost. Or it could be that it gets delivered to my house, but I just have too much junk mail and it gets lost in the shuffle.

So the same rules apply there - people will frequently follow up with more hands-on methods to ensure important messages reached their destination in the "snail mail" world too. They may call, or they may resort to a more assured delivery method (something like FedEx perhaps, where there is a signature showing it was hand delivered to the person).
The same applies to the digital world - if you really must know that the person got the message - then you need to either call them, or resort to a more certain delivery system like having them download a file via HTTP or FTP, or even a file sharing system.

Posted by Eric at 05:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New web annoyances

Everyone that has been using the web for more than say, three days, knows about how annoying pop-up ads are. Fortunately due to things like the Google Toolbar for IE, and the built-in pop-up blocking of FireFox, Safari, and even IE (after updates) we are now seeing far fewer pop-ups.

But you can't seriously think that advertisers are going to just shrug their shoulders and think "oops, they got us." No, they will do what they always have done - innovate. Innovation is a great thing... usually. But in this case, it just leads to new annoyances. In this case, said annoyances are floaters.

Floaters are essentially the same as a pop-up in that they block the page with their content, but they are actually a part of the page itself. They can be executed in Flash, ActiveX controls (only IE), or just straight HTML/CSS.
Technically there are still ways to block them, but it is going to be a continuing cat and mouse game as the people creating them find ways of still getting them to your screen.

What is interesting is that generally speaking, if you annoy someone with your ad, they are more likely to just want it to go away than they are to actually pay attention to it and be influenced to buy whatever it is being sold. But yet everyday we see/hear that the reason spam is getting so bad is that it actually works.
Well the same thing applies to annoying web advertising as well - they wouldn't do it if it didn't work. I think personally I would never buy something from seeing one of those sorts of things, but there are certainly those who do.
I would be curious to see if those new to the web (and those more clueless about how it and computers in general work) are more likely to buy something from an annoying ad technique than those more technically experienced/savvy. I know in the past when I have raised the point to those who are new to the web that some of the behavior which they are complaining about was largely dueto them just not "getting it", they took great offense to the idea. So it is an area to be careful with when discussing.

On a side note, there are no pop-ups or floaters on this site - if you ever see one on here, then you are infected with spyware and it is putting it in.

Posted by Eric at 11:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

MailWasher Pro, server-side anti-spam solution, now on Macs

For those of you in the Mac world of servers, note that MailWasher Pro is now out for Mac.

While I do use a Powerbook everyday, my experience administrating Mac servers is essentially nil, so I can't really speak much as to how good/bad this product is - I'm just pointing out that it is available now. More options is always a good thing to see - especially in the slightly limited software range for the Mac.

Posted by Eric at 09:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spam costs Hong Kong $769M in 2004

Hong Kong's technology chief announced that spam cost the economy $769M last year in a recent press release.

This would probably explain the recent government involvement there in the legal sense to try to stop spam.

As with any of these announcements, the figures are always huge (and even bigger of the party reporting them stands to benefit from a larger number) - so take that with a grain of salt. They are looking at resources in terms of worker time and network bandwidth when they calculate these costs - and while I am in no way implying that spam isn't an issue, reports like this are usually not accurate in true cost. Were there no spam, it doesn't necessarily mean that their economy would have seen that money elsewhere since some of it involves sunk costs as well.
Don't get me wrong though, I'm all for getting more people to be aware and frustrated with spam so that more will be done to stop it.

Posted by Eric at 09:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

MSNBC sends out spam as news

I didn't see it, but it looks like MSNBC sent out a news bulletin that was actually a spam message.

From the article, it looks as if an employee at MSNBC was asleep at the wheel (or was paid off to do it if you are a conspiracy theory type) and accidentally sent a lottery spam e-mail to a "breaking news" mailing list MSNBC has.
No word on how many people actually got the message in their inbox.

Posted by Eric at 02:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hong Kong plans to try to stop spam

Every week we see more countries sitting down and deciding to do something serious (meaning creating laws and policies) about spam. This week Hong Kong announced that it is putting into place anti-spam measures in order to fight spam on several fronts.

The most interesting thing to note, at least in that particular release, was that (unlike many that we see) it was actually about bulk mailing in general and not just scams which use that as their delivery mechanism.

It still remains to be seen as to how effective any of the measures put in place by any of the countries talking about it will be. It is easy to talk about it, but harder to act on it with success.

Posted by Eric at 10:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How the voicemail at T-Mobile was hacked

While I generally try to stick to spam, much of how you get spam in life is due to your personal information and contact data being too easily spread to those who will then use it for nefarious deeds. Hence why I tend to post computer/mobile security issues as well.

In that vein, Gizmodo has what looks to be an exclusive in the T-Mobile Paris Hilton voicemail hack. (I really do want to stop writing "Paris Hilton", but it is getting comically hard not to)

The Gizmodo post doesn't show you how to do it, but instead tells you how to avoid it, or at least minimize what damage could come from it.

Everyone gives Paris Hilton a hard time for being a bimbo, but if it turns out she is shorting T-Mobile, this could turn into the stock scandal of our short century so far. If you too are up for it, shorting T-Mobile now still probably isn't that bad an idea.

Posted by Eric at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Reading EULAs for fun and profit

EULAs (End User License Agreements) are ever increasingly long-winded, densely packed snoozefests of legalese which you see in your software that essentially is there so that the company to which you gave money for the product... can sue you if you don't use the product in the way they wanted. Or, conversely, when you go to sue them, they can point to the fact that you read the EULA and then by installing the product implicitly agreed to waive all rights to sue said company.

And in either case if it makes it to court that doesn't help too much either way since that will get overruled in many cases.

Perhaps that is why for the most part, people just don't read those things at all. Or perhaps it is because we are all a bunch of lazy morons and when we see a lot of words on the screen, we glaze over and look for something to click on to make it go away.

In fact, I have probably written enough in this post to already lose many people by this point. But those people will miss out on the point of all of this - a company put a clause in their EULA which resulted in a user getting $1000 for reading it. Essentially the company wanted to point out that if people actually paid more attention to what they were installing, they might avoid some of the spyware which gets installed on their systems.

While I think it is an awesome idea, I think it is giving users far too much credit. I am a systems manager at work and these people just flail wildly on their keyboards and mice, no clue at all what they are doing but they like the way the screen flashes when they do it. And that is at work - at home I imagine it is just an orgy of spyware and viruses all mixed in with a huge helping of penis enlargement pills and Nigerian princes.
Fun contests or not, if you want people to install your software and agree to anything at all, just put it in dense text and give a button for easy exit which allows them to avoid reading - and you are home free to install whatever you want.

Posted by Eric at 11:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spyware maker demands to not be called syware maker

Slashdot has up something mentioning the fact that iDownload makes spyware, but are sending out cease and desist notices to people who list their iSearch software as spyware.

The Slashdot post has links to more information which seem to indicate that iSearch actually is spyware.

Posted by Eric at 09:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New spam laws are proposed in New Zealand

New laws and fines are being proposed to determine punishment for those caught spamming in New Zealand. Always good to see more countries getting into the effort to crackdown on this problem.

Posted by Eric at 05:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Symanetc extends their Hotmail contract

Symantec currently has an exclusive contract with Microsoft's Hotmail webmail application for providing anti-spam services. This appears to have caused an increase in their stock price today (Symantec).

Posted by Eric at 05:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spam filtering tech used to fight AIDS

This headline is a bit misleading when they say that spam filtering may lead scientists to AIDS vaccine. Technically spam filtering will have nothing at all to do with it. What they really mean of course is machine learning (and probably specifically Bayesian classification or at the very least Markov Matrix population if I had to guess), but that doesn't make for a headline.

Also note that in the article, they repeatedly make it sound as if the computer and/or program is thinking, when in reality it is just tracking the statistical likelihood that an event or characteristic shows up and then acting on that based on the probability of its occurrence.
Also annoying in that they repeatedly make it sound like the virus is purposely mutating by choice, when it is a random thing. It reproduces on a massive scale and with that many opportunities for error, sometimes an error works in its favor in that it allows it to mutate and spread more readily (avoiding drugs along the way). But there are plenty of mutations that cause it to die off immediately - we just don't care about those mutations since they work in our favor (it can't breed if it is dead).

Posted by Eric at 10:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The implications of security in today's wireless world

Russell Beattie posts a response to the Paris Hilton hack.

He raises key points that there are much larger issues in any security break than just the person it has happened to. It has an effect on all of those in the data which the device contains. He also notes that with current technology it even provides the potential for stalking behavior (although he also says that was not likely the case in the Paris Hilton hack).

Russell raises the excellent point that there are many companies which are currently trying to provide services for you which involve holding a lot (if not all) of our personal data which can change our lives - both for good bad. These companies are doing this with the intention of helping us and also clearly they want to make money by providing this service.
Sadly, those two things aren't especially synergistic and frequently things will be done half-assed in order to get them out faster and making money sooner. The result shows in things such as T-Mobile's massive bad publicity (and let's not forget Danger too) on this hack through very basic security issues that should have been accounted for in a well tested end product.

Having worked at several companies which provide services to support this sort of thing, I am aware of what needs to be done and what frequently isn't done. It isn't that the engineers are incompetent - frequently they raise the issue of what needs to be done. But someone higher-up will override the decision to make it perfect and be fine with "good enough" in order to get the product out the door.
This might be just fine in the cases of some products - but in the case of something which contains such vital information of your clients - it is not something to try to rush out.
If a project manager or his/her superior has experience making product XYZ and knows that they can cut corners to get it out faster and beat their competition, that doesn't necessarily make them an expert on product/service ABC.

Russell raises great points and it is something that frustrates many a developer out there on projects such as these.

But then near his closing he craps on it all by sneaking in (with hinted FUD too) that his employer is Yahoo and they are the ones to trust to do all of this correctly. While I may even agree with him that Yahoo certainly does do many of these things right (as do Google, A9/Amazon, and probably plenty of others) - that article is not the place to go on saying that they are the cure to what ails this problem.
Any company can fall prey to this - certainly T-Mobile and Danger never sat around and decided that they were going to be weak on it. So the fact that Yahoo feels they are going to do things perfectly means nothing as well.

A good blog entry, but let's leave the ads and FUD out.

Posted by Eric at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Making friends and influencing people: SMS.ac and Joi Ito

Joi Ito is a big name in the web nerd community. He has a blog post up in which he explains how he used a service, they spammed his entire contact list, he then quit the service and posted a public apology... and now SMS.ac is sending him a cease and desist claiming that he has done something illegal.
Note that he also points out Chilling Effects which is a good resource for this sort of thing.

This is probably not a good sign that SMS.ac is any sort of company that you would want to do business with. You also have to wonder if they are just doing this for all of the free publicity as people around the web point to them and say "look at these idiots".

(From Boingboing)

Posted by Eric at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

419/Iraq Variant

Regular readers of this blog are well aware that the 419 scam is also known as the Nigerian Scam. It gets its name from the legal code (419) that was put in place in Nigeria in order to try to chase the people who are making money off of these scams.

There is currently one going around that preys on those who want to help troops in Iraq.

It is not my place to comment on the intelligence of the people that fall for this sort of thing, but I will at least do my part by trying to get the word out about it.

Posted by Eric at 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More scams, more spam

It is like today is "scam day" in the news or something. Perhaps it is because of all of these international conferences that are being held on how to stop these scams.
Here we see that the Asia Meeting on eCommerce is discussing how to stop scammers like those in the wake of the tsunami tragedy who played on those who wanted to help.

While I don't think there is a single one of us who wouldn't like to see them stopped, it does make me cringe a bit to see that all of the groups speaking at that conference were the companies who stand to directly benefit from us listening to them on how to stop spam. I suppose that can only be expected at a conference that is after all about eCommerce.
It just makes the cynic in me wonder how much they are interested in stopping the scammers, and how much they are really interested in using FUD to sell more of their products.

Posted by Eric at 11:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blogs and spyware, join forces

Apparently some of the blogs over at Blogspot (I believe that is Google's free blog site) spread spyware (more here and here). The issue seems to be with NextBar, which looks to be a browser plug-in which... does something useful? Not sure on that, but it also appears to get you to sites which give you spyware, so it's got that going for it, you know, which is nice.

Do note that it appears you have to be using IE and Windows in order to get this, which makes me repeat the usual "please switch to FireFox" mantra that it seems the whole net is chanting at those who haven't caught on yet.

FireFox is not bulletproof, but it is far better than the leaky mess that IE is currently (at least until IE 7 comes out).

Posted by Eric at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Australia also vows to track down spam scammers

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is joining in an international effort to track down spammers that are trying to defraud internet users.

It would appear that this would be related to our previous post on here in that agencies around the globe are going after people who are trying to run scams and using email/spam as the delivery mechanism.

While that surely is good to help reduce the volume of spam, it isn't designed to stop or even slow spam in general. It still appears that we are on our own for now on that - which is music to the ears of companies which make anti-spam software and devices.

Posted by Eric at 11:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

OFT Spam Scam Crackdown

These news sites sure do love titles which rhyme. The Register reports that the OFT is involved in a spam scam crackdown.

This seems to be yet another sign that for the most part, governments all over seem less interested in stopping spam in general, but more interested in focusing on the scams. So the "spam" part of it is just a delivery mechanism, but the scams are what they have been going after in any form (face to face, over the phone, or via email).

For those of you slow on the uptake, that is a UK-centric article, so those of you in America can clap your hands over your ears and ignore it.

Posted by Eric at 11:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Matt Haughey on Knowspam

Matt Haughey (creator of MetaFilter recently posted in his blog about using Knowspam.

I could have sworn that I talked about this before on Spamblogging, but can't seem to find the post, so perhaps I just intended to. Either way, I will now be adding it to our links section (note that Knowspam has a free trial and then a fee after that).

Having e-mailed Matt before, I know that to the eyes of an outside observer, the process works in that you e-mail the person as usual. Then you get a response from Knowspam the first time through if you aren't in their database that requires you to authenticate (basically show that you aren't a bot) and then after that you are in the database as being okay (so you only have to do it the first time for that e-mail).

According to Matt, he has blocked about 2000 spam messages a day with this system (apparently the system must provide stats, which is nice for people like me who are statu junkies).

Posted by Eric at 11:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Site updated

It won't really be noticeable on the site at all (although I did change some of the font sizes), but we are now running on Movable Type 3.15 and the latest MT-Blacklist.

Previously we had sent out notifications for comments and new posts, but I am going to be taking that out of the new setup. So if you see remnants of the old site around, they will be slowly disappearing as I fix that.

Other than that, it should be the same as usual.

Posted by Eric at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Treo 650 and Exchange 2003

I now have a Treo 650 (the unlocked/unbranded one) and I can use its built-in VersaMail to connect over ActiveSync to our Exchange 2003 system. This is all done over SSL, both sending and receiving.

On the good side, it is extremely easy to setup (granted I had already setup the Exchange 2003 system to be ready for this) and it works quite well.

On the bad side, VersaMail doesn't have any anti-spam or filtering capabilities. It also doesn't allow anything but the Inbox to be retrieved - which is fine for me. But depending on how your mail gets distributed to folders, it is possible to miss mail that way (especially if your Outlook is running on your desktop and is filtering mail out to folders while you are away from your desk and trying to check mail via your Treo 650).

The lack of an anti-spam feature is actually probably a good thing in the end since you are likely paying for your data access (to download the email) and you don't want to have to download 20 messages to your Treo 650 if they are just spam.
So if you have an anti-spam solution on your Exchange server which then quarantines the spam out, or something that marks it so that it is put into a different folder other than your Inbox - that way VersaMail/ActiveSync won't download it.

For my needs, it has really been great so far. Some of my users are wanting a bit more and I am not quite sure what else can use ActiveSync at this point (on the Treo 650 that is). Mainly they want to get/add their contacts remotely, and have the calendar be slightly smarter (right now it always assumes the server is right).

I definitely recommend it so far as a mobile e-mail/web tool - now if only I could get an unlimited data plan here in Bermuda.
(I also wrote up something over at Epinions about the phone)

Posted by Eric at 06:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New virus currently favoring RAR

There is a new virus out which favors using RAR files. RAR files are a type of compression that isn't as standard on most user systems as say ZIP files are. Frequently it is used in warez (illegally copied software), but obviously not limited to that.

Many anti-virus systems don't look out for this type of file, hence the move towards it by the writers of this virus.

I have already updated the mailserver's anti-virus blocking rules on the Exchange 2003 server where I work - it now blocks RAR files both if they have that extension and also if they are mislabeled it checks the file type as well.

Do note that this doesn't mean in any way that all RAR files are going to have viruses. It is just something interesting to note and look out for.

Posted by Eric at 05:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Gmail, perpetual Beta?

When Gmail first came out, it was invite only and the invites which one would receive would be given out apparently based on usage of the system. Meaning if you used Gmail more (send/receive) then you would be more likely to get more invites to hand out. Then Google went public and nearly immediately after that, as if their cash infusion allowed them to dedicate more time/staff/servers to Gmail, they pumped out a bunch of new invites to people which would presumably make the system grow that much more.

They have slowly added features over time and made it that much better to use (it now will forward to external accounts, allow POP3 checking, and various filters on incoming mail) - and very recently (a few weeks) everyone with an existing account got 50 new invites to hand out to people when previously they would get something around 5 invites to give out at a time.

This appears to indicate that Gmail has reached an interesting point. A point where it can handle many more new users if they are allowing that many more to be invited in. But also a point where it may have already reached the point where everyone that wants a Gmail account... already has one. If that is the case, then it seems reasonable to open the system to the public. But perhaps the invite only type system allows Gmail some level of class and distinction since you have to theoretically know someone in order to get in.
(that said, there are services like isnoop which will give out the invites to anyone - also you can donate your invites to that - they currently have a ton of them)

There are theories that Gmail was staying in the invite only stage because it was beta, others think that it is to keep that "members only" feeling to it (even if essentially anyone could get in), and others think that this system allows them to track down how miscreants get in - hopefully reducing the amount of spamming that goes on.

So far, I have definitely seen spam come from at least one Gmail account - and what is interesting is that I have seen both Hotmail and Yahoo treat Gmail like spam automatically. I am curious if that is purposeful or merely an amusing side effect.

But all of this raises an interesting question as to whether Gmail will remain in Beta forever, or if it will ever become a final product? Generally "Beta" status lets people be aware that a product might have some bugs in it, therefore the system can get away with not being perfect.
Perhaps never taking your system out of Beta status allows you an infinite period of getting away with small glitches that a final release would no longer afford?

Regardless of any meaning in the Beta, I quite enjoy Gmail and I currently have 50 invites if anyone out there still doesn't have an account, but wants one.

Posted by Eric at 10:29 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Who would have thought that we could learn from Paris Hilton?

When I first saw this, I thought it was going to be related to the "hacker" (I say that in quotes because all the guy did was notice poor security in the T-Mobile interface through Danger's SideKick site, not exactly "mad skillz") who was recently nabbed by the FBI.

While this might be related, it appears to be slightly different in that it is Paris Hilton specific - although still related to the SideKick and T-Mobile. Apparently now her phone book, notes, and photos are all now online. As you can imagine, her phone book has plenty of "famous people" in it and now that it is on the net, many people are going to have to change their numbers because of this. Additionally the notes are personal on both sides and then there are the pictures which in true Paris Hilton fashion are NSFW.
The Superficial has the scoop.

While I never would have thought this blog would have anything to do with Paris Hilton since I prefer the technical bent - this is an excellent example of why it is bad to entrust companies to handle our information properly. Because generally speaking, that doesn't often happen correctly.
As I noted in that other link, the FBI also got burned by using SideKicks and their e-mail was seen by someone they were trying to investigate.

If you do business which you don't want other people to read/see/hear, then it is that much more crucial that you are careful with how you handle it. It might not be a big deal if someone got ahold of my phone since I mostly have restaurant numbers in there and some relatives numbers - there is nothing in there which would ruin my life or others were it to get out.

Posted by Eric at 01:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pop-ups are back

Slashdot has up a post noting The Return of the Pop-Up Ad.

The general idea is that those who want you to see pop-up ads were losing money due to so many people using pop-up blockers, either as add-on programs, or built into their browsers.
So they figured out a way around that and started programming that for their pop-ups.

As a result, you will likely start seeing more pop-ups.

I first noticed this way back when Google's Toolbar first came out and would block pop-ups (when was that? years ago right?). I was on a site and figuring out a way around something they were doing (I was writing a bot that would post to a discussion board as something fun to do) and in the process discovered that there were ways around the pop-up blocker of Google's Toolbar.
I didn't then, and I won't now go around posting how exactly to get around such things for the obvious reason of - I don't really want pop-up ads.

On the good side, if you use a program like FireFox, then you are likely going to get a patch for this within a week. If you are using IE, I hear version 7 will be out within a year. Safari users (me) will probably be in the monthly security updates that seem to come from Apple.

*Also note that comments will be open on posts starting with this one. See how things go in terms of comment spam.

Posted by Eric at 01:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Man arrested for spim

Spim of course being instant messaging spam. A man was arrested recently for spamming people via instant messages for adult sites.

While I would like to think that anyone that sends spam over any protocol, even instant messaging, could be traced and prosecuted - in this case it looks like the guy was caught for being an idiot. In what appears to be blackmail of sorts:

MySpace users first complained about the initial deluge of messages in October. The company scrambled to delete more messages before they were read, and it made changes in the service to deter the program Greco allegedly used to create new accounts.

The next month, Greco proposed a deal to MySpace executives: He would pay the company $150 a day for the exclusive right to send advertising to MySpace users. Otherwise, "I have no choice but to just sell off my coding to other people and allow them to pick up the projects," he wrote, according to an affidavit by Los Angeles Police Det. Frank Schweitzer.

Company executives contacted law enforcement. Greco agreed to fly to Los Angeles to sign a contract and was arrested when he arrived Wednesday. He was charged with violating a federal anti-spam law, harming MySpace computers and attempting extortion. Facing 18 years in prison if convicted, he was released Thursday under a $25,000 bond.

"I'm not guilty," Greco said in a brief cellphone interview Friday. "I really can't talk about it." His lawyer declined to comment.

Posted by Eric at 01:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Well that didn't last long.

While I am still busy, I have been getting several e-mails a day asking me to start this back up again.

My ego is unable to keep me away any longer.

I won't try to follow up on what has happened while I was away, and instead will just start posting about things relevant from here out.

I will be converting to MovableType 3.x sometime "soon" and until then I am going to leave the design "as is" and I will be leaving commenting turned off. After the upgrade I will see from there what I want to do.

Posted by Eric at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack