

Apple's Ping Overrun with Spam - Garbage
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/apples_ping_overrun_with_spam.php

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Tekhne
OT: We're so used to tech buzzwords that sometimes we don't realize our secret
language sounds odd. Just look at the title of this post literally. It's
pretty hilarious.

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AlexBlom
Welcome to the open web, Mr. Jobs.

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brandnewlow
I know it's funny and all, but in all seriousness, perhaps we underestimate
just how damaging the rampant, often out of control spam on "the open web" is
to the consumer experience. Keeping Apple products clear of that sort of stuff
has been a big win for them so far.

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josefresco
Unfortunately for Apple they'll have to deal with this more and more as they
grow beyond simply being a premium niche provider to mainstream. It's easy to
keep a walled-garden clean and orderly but once you grow beyond that and need
to connect people's outside "messy" lives with your product, it gets much
tougher (see Microsoft)

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electromagnetic
I'm waiting for the fateful day when the virus makers see Apple OS' as a true
target. Apple and Apple users have been living in a walled-garden and they
don't know the difference between a grass snake, the game Snake and a cobra,
because they're protected from the dangers of the open web by being a
minority.

The bigger problem is that Apples exceedingly proprietary nature will likely
lock-out any of the established or establishing anti-
virus/trojan/malware/spyware companies from stepping in quickly when the flood
occurs.

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katovatzschyn
Phishing is cross-platform.

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modeless
Well, the whole thing is nothing but a vehicle for Apple's own iTunes store
link spam. It's ironic that Apple didn't realize anyone else could use it to
spam their users too.

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jat850
Comment #4 from the page:

"Email me for a free iphone!!

free-iphone99@hotmail.com

Thx RWW!

Posted by: free-iphone | September 3, 2010 8:39 AM"

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pavel_lishin
Actual spam, or brilliant parody?

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chc
Yeah, that was my guess. The fact that it was the fourth comment makes the
parody angle more likely still.

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jschuur
The launched with so few featured artists and recommended users, that everyone
ends up following Lady Gaga, Rick Rubin and Alexandra Patsavas, so naturally
spammers gravitate around them.

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vaksel
the only way to battle spam is to either A) moderate all comemnts or B) close
all comments

Anything else can be bypassed

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bemmu
The spam filter on GMail seems to work well enough.

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vaksel
talking about comment spam here.

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CamperBob
What's the difference between email spam and comment spam, exactly? Why don't
online forums use Bayesian filtering to get rid of comment spam?

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mishmash
I haven't followed SpamAssassin in several years, but have any startups ever
tried running their comments through it?

As you point out, it seems like many of their rules for emails would apply
equally well to blog comments.

