geek: November 2006 Archives

This is quite a user friendly offering called Diino it has a free option that allows you to store up to 2GB of data. The prices for bigger packages seem pretty reasonable too. Not to sure about all the added extras such as email and blog facility, but maybe that's just me.

Probably a good option for the home user looking to keep a select few precious documents safely backed up

Although these are on the wane as pump and dump and diet pills are becoming more popular for spammers, they are still doing the rounds. Enter Phishtank - a collaborative and free to use effort to identify phishing attempts. You can report what you suspect is a phish, but the fun but is in verifying potential phishes that have been reported by other users. It's a bit like a geek equivalent of HotOrNot.

Do your bit and join up!

This is an interesting approach to reducing spam. The basic idea is to slow down SMTP server responses to incoming mail commands, such as that spammers either give up on the connection or are left hanging around waiting to complete the transaction for a long period. This article is a good  summary of how it works. It also suggests the idea originated in Germany, although I have seen other, apparently independent, developments along the same lines (although I can't remember where).

Basically, spammers need to send lots of mail. The more the merrier. They send millions. Often they will not wait for slow SMTP servers because they reduce their productivity. Tar pitting often results in spam just not being sent (via that server) at all because of this. Even if they do wait for slow connections the slow down reduces the throughput of the spammer. Less spam, overall, is being sent. As you can see from the article above, aggressive tar pitting can keep a spammer tied up for days waiting to complete a mail transaction. The more they are tied up trying to send, the more it costs them in time and therefore money. And that hurts spammers because their only goal is to make money, not spend it.