Tuesday 19 December 2006

Oh Bum. I got Tagged.

Ann Elisabeth Nordbø (aka The Spamhuntress) tagged me earlier. That means I am duty-bound, dear reader, to tell you three things you may not know. Hmmm...

  1. My first real job was at Thorpe Park -- a theme park in an old gravel pit near Staines. I was a pirate on Treasure Island. 1983.
  2. I first used email and IM in 1985. God bless JANET, BSD, PDP11s, and VT100s.
  3. I've never had measles or mumps. As you may know, I recently got chickenpox (don't follow link if you're of a nervous disposition).
  4. I actually get paid to blog -- by Computerworld (where I write IT Blogwatch) and Ferris Research (where I edit/manage the weblog and occasionally write).
  5. I'm an only child (does it show?)
  6. You are number 6.
My other duty is to blog tag five other poor unfortunates. How about: the Notes-tastic Ed Brill, Karma-chameleon Meng Weng Wong, poly-mathematical Ian Lamont, Irish assassin Justin Mason, and the most mysterious "Ravelox".

Another Challenge/Response Datapoint

Sorry to harp on about challenge/response, but on the topic of C/R causing many false positives, I just noticed this post on The Admin Zone:

I HATE challenge-response spam blocking with a passion. All the time, I get Earthlink members signing up on my message board, but not putting the domain name in their whitelist. When vBulletin sends out a validation email, the following bounces back into my mailbox ... As a matter of principle, the mods and I NEVER respond to email challenges; we NEVER "click the link below" to be added to a whitelist.

If an existing user starts using challenge-response spamblocking, forget to put my domain in their whitelist, subscribe to threads, and as a result fill my mailbox with challenges, they're suspended for a week. Behind spam, it is my number two pet peeve.