[spam-stopper] Redirection Domains & A and idea for a self-check API

[Shayne O'Neill]

Perhaps it'd be nice to make some system where service providers (stuff 
like blogger or the commercial wordpress providers, and stuff like the 
notlong and tinyurl, etc, etc, stuff , can get a perhaps xml-rpc type 
notification that their service is getting abused in some way.

Like if akismet , however the heck its working internally, goes "Ok, this 
url http: //makewangbigger.blogger.com is a spam url" then if could fire 
off an xml-rpc notification that that url is being abused and then blogger 
or whatever could go "ok. This notification is comming from akismet, we 
trust akismet, time to nuke it".

It'd have to be formalised, and with propper measures to avoid abuse (for 
instant people putting in bogus requests against political opponent blogs, 
or whatever). But basically if there was a way to knock the spammers right 
off the large commercial services, then that'll make the spammers job ALOT 
more expensive and harder.

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006, rich boakes wrote:

> Earlier today I spoke with Eric Hammond of notlong.com after receiving a 
> topside of spam that was using notlong as a redirection service; he's very 
> quickly killed off the misused URLs (thanks Eric).
>
> Services such as notlong would benefit greatly if they could access a list of 
> spammed URLs so they could disable them before they can be profited from, and 
> it seems that Akismet.com is well placed to provide such a service.
>
> Eric had all kinds of other questions when I mentioned that akismet was able 
> to stop the spam before it got through; questions I can't answer such as:
>
>> What specifically is known to akismet.com?  The specific notlong.com URLs 
>> or the long URLs where they get redirected?  Are you sure akismet.com is 
>> not simply blocking all notlong.com URLs?
>
> If anyone can furnish Eric with non-speculative answers then I'm sure he'll 
> be delighted; but in the meantime I thought I'd moot the idea of an API for 
> checking if your domain has been used for spam.
>
> Rich
> --
> http://boakes.org
>