Comments on: Human Powered Spam Factories http://cogdogblog.com/2009/11/24/human-spam-factories/ Alan Levine's space for barking about and playing with technology Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:46:15 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: Abimbola Akanwo http://cogdogblog.com/2009/11/24/human-spam-factories/comment-page-1/#comment-72607 Abimbola Akanwo Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:10:45 +0000 http://cogdogblog.com/?p=4404#comment-72607 Wish I have an answer... Thank you for the post...good to know what's going on on the ground... Wish I have an answer…

Thank you for the post…good to know what’s going on on the ground…

]]> By: Alan Levine aka CogDog http://cogdogblog.com/2009/11/24/human-spam-factories/comment-page-1/#comment-72591 Alan Levine aka CogDog Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:55:14 +0000 http://cogdogblog.com/?p=4404#comment-72591 That's really sad- yours was an influential blog when I got started. That’s really sad- yours was an influential blog when I got started.

]]> By: Alex H. http://cogdogblog.com/2009/11/24/human-spam-factories/comment-page-1/#comment-72590 Alex H. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:21:12 +0000 http://cogdogblog.com/?p=4404#comment-72590 Hi, I'm both a real human and *not* spamming (or at least not intentionally). I have largely given up on blogging--not by choice, but just been a bit scattered. So I was surprised to see spam on my blog. See, I changed the code of my commenting feature in such a way that it is a sort of CAPTCHA entirely idiosyncratic to my site. Easy to program a spam-bot to defeat it, but it would only be for my own personal blog. At first, that's what I figured it was, but now I'm pretty sure it's RL humans. And I suspect that rather than a sweatshop, it's mTurk, though there's no way to know for sure. I guess, in some way, I'm happy people are at least getting paid (?). Hi, I’m both a real human and *not* spamming (or at least not intentionally).

I have largely given up on blogging–not by choice, but just been a bit scattered. So I was surprised to see spam on my blog.

See, I changed the code of my commenting feature in such a way that it is a sort of CAPTCHA entirely idiosyncratic to my site. Easy to program a spam-bot to defeat it, but it would only be for my own personal blog. At first, that’s what I figured it was, but now I’m pretty sure it’s RL humans.

And I suspect that rather than a sweatshop, it’s mTurk, though there’s no way to know for sure. I guess, in some way, I’m happy people are at least getting paid (?).

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