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Blue Security Reborn As Social Action Enabler
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Dec 18, 2006 04:28 AM
from the raining-holy-hellfire dept.
from the raining-holy-hellfire dept.
griswaldo writes "Wired News writes about the re-birth of the ill-fated Blue Security as a social action company. According to the article, founders of the former anti-spam company that made headlines after incurring the wrath of a Russian spam king have set up a company called Collactive that provides tools to organize grassroots action on political and social web sites. The article mentions a global warming initiative called WorldCoolers and, for the Slashdot YRO crowd, the Privacy Alert Network that kicked off by letting people comment on Homeland Security's latest crazy idea."
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IT: Spammers on the Run 297 comments
ericald writes "An interesting
update from Blue Security, the group that introduces the Blue Frog initiative to fight spam, claims that during the past few days at least one spammer had frequently deleted domains he owned as a result of their system.
In another update in their blog
they report they have already recruited over 21,000 users.
It's about time spammers start feeling the heat! I'm just surprised they show results so soon."
[+]
IT: Blue Security Gives up the Fight 672 comments
bblboy54 writes "According to The Washington Post, Blue Security has closed its doors, which can be confirmed by the Blue Security application failing to work today and their domain no longer resolving. Blue Security's CEO is quoted in the article: "It's clear to us that [quitting] would be the only thing to prevent a full-scale cyber-war that we just don't have the authority to start," Reshef said. "Our users never signed up for this kind of thing." You have to wonder where it goes from here. It seems an effective method has been found but more than a small private company could handle. Will someone else adapt this concept, or does the internet world give up?"
[+]
IT: BlueSecurity Fall-Out Reveals Larger Problem 366 comments
mdrebelx writes "For anyone following the BlueSecurity story, sadly the anti-spam crusader has raised the white flag. Brian Krebs with the Washington Post is reporting that after BlueSecurity's announcement, Prolexic and UltraDNS, which were both linked with BlueSecurity through business relations came under a DNS amplification attack that brought down thousands of sites.
While much of the focus about the BlueSecurity story has been centered on the question of what can be done about spam, I think a bigger question has been raised - is the Internet really that fragile? What has been going on is essentially cyber-terrorism and from what has been reported so far the terrorist clearly have the upper hand."
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Blue Security Reborn As Social Action Enabler
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Finnaly, I can let the DHS know what I think (Score:2, Informative)
Power to the people (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe this will bring user-generated sites to everyday folk. I can already envision my grandma telling me how many stories she Dugg, and all without even leaving her bridge game!
If you can't beat spam, add to it! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://blog.280z28.org/)
"Once it's installed, the organizers can send alerts to users or update the software with scripts that know how to take particular actions, such as automatically filling in feedback forms on a politician's website. End users can also forward e-mail alerts to their friends, who have the option of installing the software themselves and joining the network."
"By picking a couple of issues that all Americans agree on, we can really rain holy privacy hellfire," Scannell said.
If you simply define spam as "unwanted commentary," a large, disruptive user base that does nothing but repeat itself could easily be placed in there.
Another problem is this: Dr. Smith disagrees with the movement being "addressed" by the Collactive users and wishes to comment. She/He should be able to offer feedback like anyone else, but if 537 near-duplicate comments fly in while she/he responds, then his/her comment is very likely to be either mass-deleted or simply overlooked.
The point is simply this: political debates should be won by the good arguments, and NOT by drowning the opposing side in a flood of automated replies. From where I'm sitting, this just looks like a hack of a piece of software trying to push a hack of an argument.
Congratulations. (Score:1)
I missed Blue Security in the headlines, but what these guys seem to be doing is pretty cool. Providing a way for people to send and receive information about issues they care about isn't really ahead of it's time technology-wise, but is definitely an appropriate and commendable use of technology.
I don't know how much hype comes from the word AJAX being thrown around, but if ever there was a place for it, I say they've found it. A niche, and a productive one at that.
Better luck this time, guys.
Funny story about chasing an idiot spammer? (Score:1)
(http://shanenj.tripod.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @02:14PM)
Of course, the big fear is that he'll get a lightbulb and figure out how to sell his email addresses to a *REAL* spammer.
Collactive? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Thursday May 24, @01:08AM)
A mattter of perspective... (Score:1)
I guess after you get your ass handed to you by a Russian spam king, the DHS isn't all that scary.
can't beat = join (Score:2, Insightful)
In short: a spamming network. Oh the irony.
What about mail server ID? (Score:3, Insightful)
But what about whitelists for email servers? Maybe something similar to the DNS system, with propagating server lists. So, you register your server with your telco, wait an hour or two, and the thing is propagated. Registration should be free, but a mandatory delay of at least 10 minutes between registration should be there; the telcos are also free to check if somebody is registering tons of servers (maybe a limit would do). This allows emailservers to reject unknown ones along with all their mail, so spammers could no longer setup a room full of machines sending millions of emails a day, and spambots with their own SMTP servers are useless. Furthermore, if some trojan hijacks Outlook accounts for spamming, email servers could (a) introduce an one second delay, thereby limiting the max amount of emails per day while not overly hurting the user, (b) report when a whitelist server suddenly sends heaps of data, and the sending server is obliged to investigate this and warn clients that they are sending too much.
All of this requires no client changes, they are all server side updates.
King's Pawn (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/~Doc%20Ruby/journal | Last Journal: Thursday March 31 2005, @01:48PM)
But is it too late for them to do anything but inspire a new generation of gulags?
Takes one to know one (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Friday January 05 2007, @12:57PM)
> grassroots action on political and social web sites.
Well, an anti-spam company should know well how to generate spam.
Remember, it's not spam if it benefits you or a cause that's worthy to you.