Re: [tlug] CAPTCHA on keitai

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2008-03-23 05:19 +0900 (Sun), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Now, if you agree with that, why are you disagreeing with me?

I think we may be talking past each other.

>  > > We need big cheap wins.
>  > Well, if the spam problem is any indication, you're not likely to get one.
> 
> Restating my point in Ranum's terms:  it's a lot easier to implement
> "default deny" on web sites (although of course Wiki and blog comments
> are exactly the opposite) than in email.

Yes, but what use is a site such as Reddit for which nobody can sign up?

While there are plenty of sites out there which can be interesting
for small groups of people, a lot of websites benefit somebody (the
owners, the users, perhaps both) by having a large number of users. And,
generally, this makes you an attractive target for spammers of some
sort.

Our current battles against the web site spammers focus on reducing the
usability of the site, which is in my mind unquestionably a step away
from a "big win." It's actually a "small lose", in that you give up (one
hopes) relatively little in order to make the spammers give up a lot.

There are other ways of attempting to deal with the spammers as well,
such as trying to get people rather than programs to audit the other
users. But they tend to fail from time to time too, as people build
programs to be the auditing users.

I really don't see anything on the horizon that looks as if it may do
something qualatatively different for web spam than what we've seen for
e-mail spam, at which we've been working a lot longer.

And by the way, "default deny" is not terribly hard to implement for
e-mail; quite a number of people out there are using systems that bounce
any e-mail from an address not on their allow lists, returning a reply
that asks legitimate senders to take some further action. That most
people don't use these says a lot, I think. But this is just rehashing
an old battle from The List That Cannot Be Named.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974   
Mobile sites and software consulting: http://www.starling-software.com