spam

I really don't like Captchas, the squiggly words that many websites use to protect forms from spam bots. Unfortunately, sometimes they are the only thing that can protect a site from clever spammers. Yesterday I heard a great story about reCaptcha, captchas that are used to crowd-source digitizing of old print books and newspapers on NPR. If you have ever tried to use a scanner with OCR, you know that it can be pretty hit or miss.

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My first spam by snail mail: more photos and full letter What's up with that? Has 'Domain Registry of America' got enough funding to do this seriously? Is anyone else getting spammed from their virtual life by snail mail?

I have found that we always get sent a bunch of catalogs, without ever signing up for any (personally, I blame magazine subscriptions...but who knows!). Anyway, this free service called Catalog Choice just launched that lets you unsubscribe from any catalog (without having to call annoying phone lines). Bill Moyers has an interesting interview with one of the organizers of the project.

Generally I think that John Doe law suits are bad. The RIAA has used them to find out the identities of alleged illegal file sharers. I never thought I would read about one that I actually could support. But today I read about a lawsuit filed by Project Honey Pot against John Doe spammers. The class action suit seeks $1 Billion in damages.