Spam Notes
The Register - Interview with a link spammer
For even a semi-competent programmer, writing programs that will link-spam vulnerable websites and blogs is pretty easy. All you need is a list of blogs - which again, even a semi-competent programmer will be able to pull together (by searching for sites with keywords such as “Wordpress", “Movable Type” and “Blogger") a huge list of blogs to hit.
(via Jeremy Zawodny’s Linkblog)
Datamation - Can Antispammers Win the War?
Although many antispam experts have criticized the U.S. CAN SPAM Act as too weak, Prince notes that the act includes an absolute prohibition against two techniques spammers depend upon to acquire addresses in the first place. These are harvesting attacks (where spammers use harvesting software to collect addresses from pages at random), and dictionary attacks, in which spammers send messages to random addresses to learn which ones are active.
Fast Company - The Dirty Little Secret About Spam
What the good guys want and what the bad guys want are more or less the same thing. J.P. Morgan Chase and Kraft U.S.A. promote credit cards and coffee in ways that aren’t so different from the tactics employed by anonymous peddlers of porn and gambling. “Legitimate” marketers would rather the spammers disappear – but not if that means quashing the opportunity that both groups enjoy.