Trackback spam

I've been reading about blog spam but hadn't experienced it until this weekend. Jenn started getting a tonne of bogus trackbacks linking to pron and other crap on her blog. She's been deleting them but has turned off commenting for now to avoid that admin work.

There's a balance between anonymity/privacy and protecting against idiocy to be struck, but this makes me wish there was an established/universal credential system for users. I remember honestly thinking way back when that PGP's web of trust was smart. Personal encryption never really took off and is still viewed by the unwashed masses as something mostly for criminals. In the meantime servers got certificates and ssl out of business necessity.

So half the equation's well established.

On the user auth side it seems like most work is going towards systems geared towards gathering marketing information for big corporations (ie: Microsoft Passport like services), because business is only likely to push a system they view as providing a return on investment. The Liberty Alliance isn't good entirely either. The EFF and other watchdogs seem very quiet on the subject these days. Probably since Sept. 11 it's dangerous to talk about systems insuring privacy and anonymity.