Spammers Now Clogging Blogs, Cell Phones [View All]

[Flaming Meaux]

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Three years ago, Adam Kalsey set up a Web log to share his thoughts about online business and the digital revolution. Like countless other "bloggers," he lets his readers post comments on his entries.

Recently, his site has been getting remarks like "Thanks for the information!" and "Sounds great!" They're not from supporters, but from people — or machines — who leave names like "Generic Viagra," "Online Gambling" and "Free Poker" and links to unsavory sites.

Spammers are flocking to new communications tools like moths to light, threatening to cripple these tools just as they are beginning to take off.

Howard Rheingold, a futurist who predicts always-on communication will revolutionize public discourse, is worried that all these new forms of spam could freeze the revolution in its tracks.

There will be no great social transformation if cell phones are turned off, instant messenger programs shut down or blog comments disabled to halt the flow of offers for online porn or cheap drugs.

"It forces you to either turn off the comments and lose some of the value of the medium, or spend your time deleting spam," said Rheingold, who runs his own blog.

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<a href ="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=528&e=3&u=/ap/20031113/ap_on_hi_te/spam_s_new_frontiers">LINK</a>

Any of you see stuff like this? My prediction is, the blog will mutate to something more resembling the DU message board, where posters first have to register. It ain't perfect, but it pretty much requires that the person registering at least be flesh and blood. A lot of boards don't have this requirement - blogforamerica.com is one of them. Can you imagine what would happen if some freeper types discovered how to spam weblogs?