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Hardware In The News

US Wireless Carriers To Start Blacklist

Wireless companies are going to start a blacklist for stolen phones. This is a long overdue move. It should have happened years ago. The downside to smart phones like the iPhone having a high resale value is that they have a high resale value. By that I mean they are targets for thieves.

Some, notably Sprint and certain wireless companies in other countries already have such blacklists. A search on ebay for “bad esn” returns quite a few phones. It’s virtually a guarantee these are all stolen phones. Some are sold for parts, some are taken to other wireless providers. Stay away from any phone marked as such if buying used or buy new. I know lots of developers buy older model new phones on eBay, and some buy used. Avoid the “bad ESN” listings so you don’t support this.

Hopefully the next step will be cooperating with overseas partners for a global blacklist. It shouldn’t be terribly difficult to accomplish. That would even further reduce the value of a stolen phone to being worth much more than it’s parts.

Categories
Blog

Jay Allen takes a break and the Internet Chokes

Jay Allen takes a break, and myself, and many others are being pounded by spammers. His last update seems to have been 2004-10-30 16:18:38+01:00. Since then, it’s been a nightmare. At least 50 since I went to bed last night (at 2:00 AM). Now at 10:00 (no morning classes, so I slept in until 9:00), I’m cleaning up from a few hours sleep.

There’s got to be a real solution to comment spam.

I’m still considering switching to WordPress since I know PHP rather well, and use a nice CAPTCHA system to protect the blog.

Categories
Blog

Ironically the day I gave up

The day I give up, this happens. Ironic.

But it’s a great thing! My blog is actually manageable again. I installed it and just minutes later it blocked it’s first spam. Instant proof it’s working. Cheers to Jay Allen for keeping Blogging afloat. I think many including myself would have quit if it weren’t for his work. Takes to much time and effort to battle spammers.

Categories
Blog

Comment Spam is driving me nuts

Come on Jay. We need 2.0. We know it’s good.

Seriously. I’m sick of deleting all these spams. And I don’t want to give up on it.

Problem with TypeKey is that people hate signing up for things. So it limits people from commenting. I hate that. I love when people post comments here. I really do. It’s my favorite thing about this site.

Ugh. No more Spam.

And my email inbox is 100X worse.

We need real laws against spam now!