January 22, 2013
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Fighting splogs, and some proposed tweaks to the registration process
Hey guys -
We've been getting hit pretty hard by spam blogs lately, aka splogs. A lot of the times the sploggers will just create a site and then... do nothing. Most of the account don't try to spam anyone; instead, they just sit there with a link in their profile. We have shut down a lot of these so-called "splogs", but they just keep coming. The worst part of splogs is that they are created in such a way that they are slowing down our themes database. As a result, some of our REAL users are having trouble creating accounts or editing their theme
To help address this, we're looking into ways that we can prove that our new users are actually real people. We already have a CAPTCHA in place, but apparently there are now companies in China and India that do nothing but hire humans to defeat CAPTCHA tests. We've tried a number of technical fixes, but a lot of times the technical fixes prevent real users from being able to register accounts.
So we've had to switch gears a bit. After some brainstorming, we've come up with a few new ways we can try and prevent these humans-for-hire from creating fake accounts:
1) AUTHENTICATE USERS FOR FREE: When someone is signing up for an account, we could ask them to authenticate to an outside account (say from Facebook or another login system with strong anti-spam controls - open to suggestions).
2) ACTIVATE USERS FOR PREMIUM: When someone is signing up for an account, we could also allow them to activate their new Xanga site if they paid for a Premium account.Either way, commenting would still work as usual: as always, commenters could comment through the usual means of:
* Signing into an existing Xanga account
* Signing in to comment through Facebook/Twitter
* Commenting anonymously on your posts (if you've enabled that)We are hopeful that this combination of approaches should help cut down massively on the amount of splogs created, and allow us to restore peace and harmony to our Themes database.
But before we went ahead with this, we wanted to check with you guys.
What do you guys think of our adding additional checks and controls to the registration process for new bloggers? Please let us know!
Comments (169)
Keep at the good work, Xanga Team. You're all awesome
A difficult problem. Thank you for soliciting comments before making changes. Maybe you could follow the Craigslist approach where they send an email to the address on file with a link authenticating a requested to Post. It seems to work for them.
I have several IRL friends who like to view my site (which is on sign-in lock), but do not want to post blogs themselves. Some of them do not have FB or other sites from which to log in to Xanga. How would they be accommodated?
Send out Liam Neeson to take care of these people.
Keep up the good work. I like the approach by gayinUS of email authenticating before activating an account.
I also like the email authentication, or the website one. No wonder I had such trouble creating this account! Keep up the good work, xanga! I've seen a couple of these fake accounts and have been spammed by them, myself!
Excellent and Ty for doing all of the work you do to keep this one of the best blogging communities on the web.
The deleting is a good thing. But, requiring another site is not fair. I trust xanga w/my personal data, but not places like FB, and I like being able to keep my online identities relatively separate. That said, could you hire people to defeat the people who are hired to defeat captcha? It could be a real growth industry in china/india.
You guys are doing a great job!
What's wrong with good old fashioned email authentication? User clicks to register, inputs desired username and email, email is sent for authentication,link is clicked, user is sent to setup process with captcha.
As for 1.)PLEASE DO NOT DO THAT. The one great thing about Xanga is that you can be here secretly. as for 2.) DO YOU MEAN IF YOU EVER WANT TO BE A MEMBER YOU MUST PAY? That sounds even more awful. Who would want to sign up then?? ..and I desperately long for a few new faces.You don't need to crack the nut with a sledgehammer. E-mail authentification would help I think. Start with that. It's extremely easy to sign up for Xanga right now. A few clicks more, and maybe one of these annoying number/letter combination passwords (skype sends them when you first sign up I think) would keep people from acting so quickly. However I should possibly add that I also just lurked around for a year or so before I created my first (very active) account. Only with an account you can make friends and see sign-in sites, and get a REAL taste of Xanga.Assuming you want to 'attract' real users while shutting splogs out: if I were you and it's somehow possible, I'd let them sign in for a "trial account" that automatically gets shut down after a week, UNLESS they verify it with what I suggested above. Otherwise just the first suggestion. Just my ideas.
Great work Xanga.Why do people want to spam Xanga and other websites.
The splogs just sit there, right?No activity, no sign in, no commenting, etc?Shutting them down after a week of no activity doesn't fix the themes problem as the ppl are constantly making new sites, but an email authentication and only one account per email being allowed doubles the work of the sploggers, as they have to create a new email for every new site. The added hassle may de-incentivize them
Sounds like a good idea to me.
CAPTCHA is necessary as it at least does force spammers to spend more money bypassing security measures.Email verification could help. Several common email services already have safeguards to prevent automated account creation, so limiting one xanga blog per email could force spammers onto less common mail services which may be easier to detect and block. It would at least require them to do more work, and the impact it would have on most users should be minimal.What if.. new users were unable to include hyperlinks until they've been around a week or so and racked up enough "credits" to verify they're here for legitimate purposes (I say credits, but it could be an internal counter like credits invisible to the user)? The threshold wouldn't have to be high because I doubt spammers are going to stick around long enough to make actual contributions, and if they try to automate content generation.. heuristics to detect/rate limit abnormal commenting might be able to help, as would an easy method for users to flag obvious spam. Spammers (and even legitimate new users) could always get around clickable links in human readable ways, but it would at least limit any advantage spammers have with using xanga in SEO-based attacks.
how is facebook or twitter a strong authentication system?facebook and twitter did the same log in process xanga does, right? so in effect it would just be outsourcing the account creation. just stick with the same email verification.@under_the_carpet - i like this guy's gimped account idea, slightly altered. i suggest longer than a week. more like 2 or 3 months, and you alter 'basic residency status' (which is merely post, comment, pulse and a profile pic) to 'adept' which unlocks themes and other major site alteration and similar for people who are active during the time.
I wonder if the xanga program where xanga members are asked to report spam and examine blogs is still in progress? I remember the days I was asked to view videos and was asked to rate them for R rating.There was a plumber like spam that I saw the other day but didn't check it out.
@lenybobsyouruncle - thanks
. You're right a longer time-span would be better.
I don't like the idea of having to pay for an account to have the account . . . nor do I want my Xanga connected to my facebook, or any other site. I come here to post how I feel in secrecy. Please find something else to do . . . how about require email acitivations? I never get emails to activate my account, and if they aren't activated within a week or so delete them.
I agree with the people that have said they would not want fb/twitter/other site to be part of the sign up process. I hate it when companies do that, and I know it would deter me from making an account if I was a new user. I also do not think it would be fair to expect someone to pay. I think what makes the most sense is what people have already mentioned with the email verification. Also, I would suggest making it so that if you don't post a comment/blog post/otherwise interact with xanga within the first week of joining your account automatically shuts down. Maybe that is too harsh of a system, but those are my thoughts. Thanks for asking for our opinions/thoughts.
It's up to you guys of course. My two concerns: I have neither FB nor Twitter accounts so I would not have opened a Xanga account had that been in effect. I'm sure there are others like me. Having to pay would likely deter people who have no compelling reason to join Xanga from opening an account. I first came here to answer a question I came across while doing a Google search. I would not have paid to answer someone's question ha ha. But I have no better solutions to offer.
I wouldn't want my Xanga site linked to my Facebook in any way, shape or form! Email authentication seems like a sensible option? Personally, I wouldn't be able to pay for Xanga premium!
Here are some ideas:- Charge 1 cent or 1 dollar or other nominal fee by credit card, or put a 1 cent or 1 dollar hold on a credit card and release it in a month. - Require an endorsement or invite from an existing Xanga member (like Google does).- Require accomplishment of a short list of Xanga community involvement tasks before a blog can be started, e.g. three comments on a featured post or something.- Require a phone number.- Require a waiting period, varying between 6 and 24 hours between initial account setup and first login.
here's hoping things improve - Xanga has been getting slower and slower of late.
Is this why Xanga sometimes just won't load at all? I so that needs to be fixed. I'm not really in favor of linking it to other sites, and think paying is not fair either. What I do like is perhaps making the first days or a week where the themes are unavailable. You just get use of the very basic account till you show you're an actual human who is going to use it properly. That also cures the issues of making those nasty 'mirror sites' that some folks love to do, plus it might even make those sites easier to spot, if new blogs suddenly request graphics that they are not authorized to use, from another user's site.
@CaKaLusa - I love his movies!
It sounds like a good idea. I know somebody at Xanga Headquarters is smarter than those other people and can figure it out. My only concern is, will legit users still be able to initially sign up for free? That's what I did when I first started, and then later, I paid for the lifetime membership.
I Bend hit hard by the spam i just flag them, i don't have my facebook page counter to xanga at all what about if thead have to have profile picter and have a vido to prove thead are real users away will give people a chang and bloge dose who open up a acount and neve pst nother at all ther acount nead to be shount down
I am not claiming I can get into the mind of a sploger. I can tell you how to get around them and slow them down. To begin with, make them authenticate with an email. It sounds small but one of the reasons splogers use xanga is because it takes no effort to set up an account. They can set up a site and post in seconds.Number two: Go to the recently updated section that is linked from the front page. Find those 8 to 10 posts in the recently updated section. Copy and paste a few of those recently updated posts in the google search engine. What do you notice? Most of those posts are already in the search engine. Yes, that is right. Google can place something in the search engine in seconds from the time it posted. That is good for you but it is also good for an seo guy/woman. Say you are an seo guy/woman and you test the search engine every day of your life. You want to test links every day. You make new links and you want them to be searched by google and youwant to see how they move on the search engine. Did this change cause the link to go up or down? You need immediate feedback in order to learn how the search engine responds to each change you make. So they are using xanga and other sites notso much for their seo juice but for the immediate feedback. This is not possible with facebook and twitter which have no follows. Google picks up in seconds on those only if a link is tweeted by hundreds of sites at a time. So the “recently updated”section is helping the “spammers” but is also good for you. The problem you are having is the ease in which a person can use xanga for spamming. You realize you have no filters that regular sites have? Lets look at livejournal. Livejournal makes it very difficult for a person to use the websites that give you 30,000 ip addresses. How do they do it? They force you to enable cookies in order to post. That takes out almost all of those sites that give you the 30,000 ip addresses. What has livejournal done? They have slowed you down. Are there ways around it? Yes. But they just took out most of the spammers. They frustrate you and make you move on. Lets look at blogger. Blogger is owned by Google. Blogger makes you authenticate your new site with a phone number now. It is interesting because craigslist does this too. Most of these splogers have unlimited access to ip addresses but they do not have unlimited phone numbers. So you have slowed them down.It is interesting that some sites make you go premium when you start a new site if you want to hotlink something or add your website. I think that is an interesting approach. This is only done with new websites but many are using this method.I tend to think that charging people may make you a little money but it will be the death of xanga. You can’t charge for services that really other sites offer forfree. New people just will not pay for premium to start an account here.So here are my suggestions:1. Make them authenticate with an email.2. Make them enable cookies in order to sign up an account.3. Make new accounts authenticate with a phone number.
@TheTheologiansCafe - WoW! You scare me, but in a good way.. I also mentioned something about legit users not wanting to pay when they initially sign up. Nice to know I was kinda thinking in the right direction.
I have always had a few friends who will join what ever site I am on but never do anything with their site. Only wanting to keep up with me so I really don't know what the answer is.
Maybe when you make an account you have to provide a phone number which will send a verification code. Some sites do that and I think it's okay. The majority of people have cell phones or access to a family member's cell phone.
I do not have a twitter account. I do have a fb account which I hardly use. I don't think asking people to pay to join xanga would be a good idea. I believe that if you insist on that there may be many good writers whose work we may never see.
@luctamur - good idea!
Actually someone did propose a Xanga Idea back in 2010 where a person must authenticate (verify) with his/her e-mail account before the Xanga account becomes active. Too bad nobody pays much attention to her proposal. Right now anyone can create an account on Xanga using a fake (or stolen) e-mail address.And looking at Xanga Ideas, it sure needs one heck of a spring cleaning. Just look at all those spams left by socialbookmark10 whose account is still very active.http://www.xanga.com/ideas
I wouldn't mind these splogs if they left me eprops
how many real Chinese users do you have in China? real ones. Maybe block those IPs from China.
Can you make the outside authentication temporary/removable once Xanga site is established, and would that eliminate more spammers or just force them to find ways around that?I prefer that you "close the door" however you can quickest, even if it means some inconvenience. Maybe a stricter "entrance" for a while helps clean it up. You can always relax requirements a bit later, but there is little point to blogging here again if it's not a "haven". I don't want to be bothered with such intrusions and the complications they create.Thanks for asking and working on a fix.
Enable e-mail verification, cookies and captcha.'nuff said.
I don't understand why a blog with no content but only a link can slow down your database? Could you elaborate? I mean, just curious.Regarding your proposals ... I wouldn't feel comfortable using Twitter, Gmail, or whatever to authenticate myself. Some here have suggested that you send a link to the e-mail address used when signing up. This seems like a good idea. Another authentication I came across was that I had to fill in the place (country) from which I was signing up.
Those are some really good ideas as well as you can have a time on their account such as if it is inactive for a certain amount of time, it will be deleted or whatever. This should be used on the login not really on the posts within the account.
Keep up the good work guys
That's a good move, this automation needs to be stopped.
Hi, I'm sorry to hear about all the trouble you have had with the spammers. Do whatever you think will work to keep the site running. Great job.
Great ideas. I think it's important for users to be able to have maintain anonymity though, and to ensure that there's no way for people to find the blog via a search for their email address, etc since there's so much personal info added into a blog sometimes. I think you should have some users test it out before it's a final go to catch any possible snags. I agree w/ Theologian's Cafe - that many new people aren't going to pay for Premium at the beginning too.
Help! I've been faithfully using xanga for all my blogging for years. (Love the format)And directing traffic to my site from my Facebook Page.But now when I post a link to the latest blog on facebook, only the "related posts" photos show up in the link. Any ideas on how to get a photo from the actual blog to be shown?
I do not sign up for things with FB links. This is something I keep separate. I have a few Xanga pals in my Facebook, but NO FB people get to my Xanga! I would have to delete my account, and that would be terrible since I've been here since 2004. Also, sorry, but I could not afford to pay, I've always just had the free site. I hope you implement some of the other solutions.Thanks!
My only concern is that I don't have to pay for an upgraded account.
HELLOHow are you today ,My Name is blessing, I came across your profile and got interested, i will like to know more about you. you can mail through my private email so that i will be able to send you my pictures and tell you more about me(blessing_mabu@yahoo.com)yours friendly,blessing
joyislam my first (very active) account. Only with an account you can make friends and see sign-in sites, and get a REAL taste of Xanga.Assuming you want to 'attract' real users while shutting splogs out: if I were you and it's somehow possible, I'd let them sign in for a "trial account" that automatically gets shut down after a week, UNLESS they verify it with what I suggested above. Otherwise just the first suggestion. Just my ideas.
HELLOHow are you today ,My Name is blessing, I came across your profile and got interested, i will like to know more about you. you can mail through my private email so that i will be able to send you my pictures and tell you more about me(blessing_mabu@yahoo.com)yours friendly,blessing
One thing I've noticed twitter doing is making people follow a bunch of users before you can even get to your own page to set it up. It's much more arduous than before. You could also do a phone number/text validation code, which is what most banks do. I agree with others that email verification/CAPTCHA is a must. I prefer not to have my Xanga linked to my other social media.And also enable users to mark comments as spam! (see above!) lol
The spam comments are really getting annoying, so I'm all for controls.
I do not believe that using another website such as Facebook to log into Xanga would be an entirely good idea.Some member of society still do not have a Facebook or Twitter-but would still like to use Xanga for their own personal blogs.And some of us are too broke to want to be able to pay-for a premium each time just To blog.I think they are some good ideas.And it's great you all decided to check with us bloggers! Thank you for that. :}But I am personally seeing some flaws that may need to be looked into.Also would anyone from xanga be able to link to your facebook through-the site or would it just be a way of proving you are a actual user alone?
Yes, I think it's a good idea, I agrees wtih (below)."1) AUTHENTICATE USERS FOR FREE: When someone is signing up for an account, we could ask them to authenticate to an outside account (say from Facebook or another login system with strong anti-spam controls - open to suggestions)."
From Morning_Dew83: "would anyone from xanga be able to link to your facebook through-the site or would it just be a way of proving you are a actual user alone?"That's a very good question and it's something that I would be concern of as well. I hope that xanga and Facebook are not linked as I would want to keep what I say in xanga separated with Facebook. I think (hope) that using facebook to prove you're a actual user alone would be good enough. But I think for others they may want their xanga to link with their FB, perhaps Xanga should give us the option to choose whether you want your xanga link with facebook or not.Just a though.
Some people do NOT want their account linked to Facebook, and do not have a Facebook in the first place. What about e-mail verifications before being able to open an account, or Require that upon registration, they have to create a weblog entry that says something specific. Similar to captcha but not? Dont know...but I think there are plenty of ways around it besides requiring a facebook account. Like another commenter said, it would really deter me from signing up if i were a new user.
I would like my Xanga site to be linked to my Facebook account, as I am interested in Internet Marketing! I believe those two sites can work simultaneously perfectly, in order to boost marketing campaigns. Finally, I couldn't pay for Xanga premium.
Facebook is EVIL!!! Resist!
why don't you use a text verification or phone verification? Those are way harder to game and less intrusive sometimes than FB connect or the premium account. I think Twilio does this. Keep it simple
@gayinUS - I agree with this one!
I think both ideas are not good. I mean anyone can make numerous emails/facebook or twitter accounts & still then make a blog/page here. So I don't see how that is helpful. Paying isn't always an option for some people so that doesn't seem good. I hate to say it but you could ban that country from making blogs for a while & then open it again. Sad as it is.
& I still can't change my theme. *sigh*
I echo TheTheologiansCafe. Those are great ideas.I have seen on forums that I would frequent that they prevent you posting a link until after a certain number of posts or certain number of days. You might want to impose a similar thing and have a welcome screen that says you need to post a few times with original content before linking to another site (this helps us deter spammers!)I think logging in with a Facebook or Google account would make a lot of things easier: authentication, Web 2.0 interfacing, people are expecting it. Some people don't want another account. They just want a single key that solves everything. Not always the best solution, but it might help.
Thanks for sharing this concern with us!! Really appreciate it.I mainly keep this account to check my friend's blog posts (she has it locked). If authenticating via facebook becomes a necessity, we might just all move to facebook instead. It seems like the authentication via facebook idea springs from the assumption that everyone has facebook. I think we came to xanga as more of an alternative to facebook (we enjoy the more close-knit and private environment here). If we end up having to link it to facebook... I dunno, it might defeat the purpose of our coming to xanga in the first place. :
I agree with e-mail verification. There are various reasons (as listed numerous times above) that paying and/or linking is not wanted.
i think u can do this: Just only 20 posts on New blog account can be get website link at Profile.How do u think ? I love xanga.com
Frankly, I don't understand the reason why these people are doing this. For me it doesn't make any sense. (You wrote: "... but apparently there are now companies in China and India that do nothing but hire humans to defeat CAPTCHA tests")
I'm surprise Xanga Team didn't even notice the spams on this particular blog.
Have you guys seen Xanga Ideas lately? Someone is having a ball posting spams, pages and pages of it.
Please shut down this anti Malaysian hate site paul-partisan.xanga.com who obviously has a deep hatred for reckless_eagle and all Malaysians on Xanga.Also please shut down this troll site reckless-eagles.xanga.com who is pretending as reckless_eagle to harass Malaysians and make anti Malaysian sentiments to make people hate reckless_eagle.We made report to you multiple times about anti-Malaysian harassments and racism. Like the spammers and sploggers, you seem to lost control on trolls as well.SHUT DOWN THESE ANTI MALAYSIAN TROLLS NOW!!!
Just skimming and scrolling through the first 25 comments, I saw that a lot of folks are recommending email authentication, and that could be reasonably effective if each new user were limited to one account per email addy. Minus that minor restriction, email authentication wouldn't be of much use.Forcing users to link accounts here with accounts elsewhere would be a catastrophe in my opinion. I've closed long standing accounts at YouTube and lots of other places precisely because of policies like that being instituted.How about requiring users to pay in Xanga credits for the privilege of creating links to other sites in their Xanga profiles instead of simply allowing new members to create links when creating their accounts? A 100 credit fee would require a greater investment of time and effort than any spammer would be willing to make just to get a single link up.Peace, good luck getting this issue resolved well, keep up the great work.
I was wondering why i couldnt make a new account
some of those spam blogs do email, I have received many.I do like the idea of email verify.
I just came back after no posts since Nov. 8 2010 so I am glad I got in before any of this happens. I like the email verification method. I have facebook but don't like it at all and I don't do twitter either.
Someone is pretending as reckless_eagle by creating reckless_eagles.xanga.com troll account to harass Xangans. Several Malaysians have been subjected to trollings. paul-partisan.xanga.com is a troll account created to harass Malaysians.There are people on Xanga who like to discredit Malaysians and other Xangans by creating fake accounts by stealing their photos and profiles and creating similar usernames. Don't let trolls and anti Malaysians destroy Xanga. Please help the Malaysians to shut down these troll accounts.
I'm on a forum where they had a sudden huge flood of spammers from a certain country/IP-range, and they just blocked all of those IP's. No more spammers.
When a new account is set up, require that there be entries made before the account holder have unlimited commenting privileges.
Please don't ever delete my Xanga. :C It's still very much active.Is there a way to download every entry? Msg me if so.x
Either a FB login in option (which is becomming rather commonplace) - and/or an e-mail verification process. Thanks for asking, we know you're trying to work these things out to be effective and beneficial for us all.
Thanks.I very like your styles.
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as Adam implied I'm shocked that you able to earn $7328 in one month on the internet. did you look at this page Great70.com
Another few comments tonight on my blog, sometimes I think people think it is a dating site.
I think e-mail verification is a good idea. I'm not in favor of linking to other sites as people can have fake facebook and twitter accounts, also not everyone has a facebook or twitter account. Charging people to start an account may curb the spammers, but it also may keep a lot of real people from joining due to financial concerns.
Do email verification as most auto spammers do not ever check their made up email accounts and verify their accounts. I'm a do it by hand SEO person so you get the real thing with me. My blogs get hit with so much spam that it turns my head. I put a math problem to do for each post that gets posted. Stuff like (8 plus Seven=15) . The combo of numbers and words usually keeps the auto spam away. Now there are the people spammers set up in spamming sweat rooms that just make fake accounts all day. Maybe send out an email after 30 days of inactivity. Maybe charge a $1 donation for the free account to go to something like feeding starving children. I'm all for helping out the poor especially children. Just a thought.Pink Drink Guy
I just wrote about this yesterday. I would like to see moderated comments or, even better, a spam filter. Two obvious criteria for identifying potential spam: the comment is made by someone with a Xanga account with zero entries, or the comment includes a link in it. Yes, sometimes a legitimate comment has a link, but most of the time it is spam.
@PlexusSlimPinkDrink - That's a good idea. How do you program that math problem into your blog?
@COLDRAVEN7 - You can download your archives by clicking on your user name, selecting "Settings", and then clicking "Weblog Archives". It prepares a zip file with a PDF inside.
I don't think making them pay at the beginning would be a good idea. It would keep a lot of good writers from ever joining. Rather, I like Dan from the TheoCafe's ideas. Do make them authenticate with their email. Enable cookies.
@TheTheologiansCafe - Spoken like a true SEO professional. Also known as a "hack." Or, one who sells nonsense products based on a hype.
Do not ask me for my phone number. I get enough spam on my phone as it is.
Well, something needs to be done. And I know you've more knowledge about options and their pros/cons than I do. I don't mind jumping thru a few hoops if Xanga were to be a little more secure, and the spam would stop.
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I like the email authentication thing but don't like the facebook thing as I don't use social media other than for blogging. Thanks
Splogging refers to spammers using blogs to profit from as a business. If you're not familiar with the term blog it's simply an online journal that legitimate businesses are using to great effect online.Biomass Heating
If you are hosting spam blogs also known as splogs then you do not need any high quality content. If on the other hand, your website is genuine and important to you, then you should know that the only thing that gives you leverage above other websites and a solid reputation online is the quality of content on your website. Junk Removal Edinburgh
Splogs in essence is a Blog that offers real no resource other than trying to trick its visitors into clicking on advertisements or sending traffic to affiliate sites. Architect in Glasgow
I tried more then three times to post a new article, but it not post. They provide me a err message. Is there have any solution to pass this err.The Tao of Badasshope, there have too xanga expert and blogger who can help me out this problem
A friend of mine had their site become ex rated for no reason because of trolls. You should have that stuff more closely monitored and allow the user to determine their site's rating. If another user posts that a site is bad, it should be reviewed by the xanga team before that site gets that rating.
What about the people who don't have Facebook/Twitter? I hate having to give up websites/online contests/anything else just because I don't Tweet. I can't afford paying for a blog either- if this happens I'll have to move my blog elsewhere.
Watch out for this troll(s) who rate your site EX newflippy flipinfour flipintwo flipinone flipinthree flipinthesky fatmanfatty baldmamma baldpappa Please block and report to Xanga Team. Alert your friends and subscribers now.
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I would recommend to add additional checks to make sure that the one who is setting up a new account would be an actual person. Here's a side note: I didn't receive this notice in my email inbox. It was sent straight to spam. I don't know how that happened. Is this a part of this problem? O_o Did other users actually received this notice in their inbox?
I honestly don't think your website loads things at an appropriate pace at all. I have been growing more and more frustrated with this site because I need a FREE website to post my writing pieces/blogs on.. and it's really aggravating how I have to wait for something to reload, I cannot edit any of my work sometimes, and it's sometimes hard to find things or navigate around the site and can be confusing to first time bloggers like me. I used to have a xanga account with you all about 6 years ago or so when you first started the website and I can say a lot of things have changed!Another thing I really am bummed about is that you are encouraging your users to pay for Premium. While, yes that would be awesome, who can afford that now a days? Certainly not those of us on a budget! I think that is really unfair honestly. With that being said, you all really need to find someone who can detect and fix these bugs because I absolutely love this website. I love how you have a "featured questions" section in case if us bloggers have writer's block.Other than what I've stated above, you all have been honest about what is going on and for that I thank you. Keep up the great work and I'd appreciate it if you would take what I said into serious consideration.
~Anna
I would be flattened if all websites gave articles like that.http://www.free--credit-score.net
At lest do an email verification. I just signed up and realized there was not an email verification and thought that was odd. I have seen some captcha around the web that has a video that plays first then gives you an answer to a question. Maybe that would help.
When the last time you guys did a spring cleaning on Xanga Ideas? The place's a mess.
I think it would be enough with email authentication. E.g., you send a confirmation link in email. When user clicks on the secret link, his blog becomes verified.
I suggest the CAPCHA's be something that other countries may not know, like information only people of the United States could answer. Sure they could look it up but it would greatly slow them down.Oh - and I couldn't write you a private message earlier, Erica - you can find your Valentine's Day card (Feb 2013) right HERE. (this link will only work for friends and staff of Xanga).
this is basic. email activation
I agree with some. Deleting the accounts are good but requiring us to have another method of identifying ourselves is a negative.I don't have a facebook or twitter account and I honestly wouldn't want one.Having to pay would stop people from coming but I came to xanga because it was free...I liked the idea of having someone from xanga to invite you to xanga but still allow xanga to be public. But there are some people who lack people to do that if they wanted a xanga of their own.It is tough to stop splogs...
All I know is, Xanga used to be great and even though the appeal is sinking fast, I still adore this place and the friends I've made.Keep up the good work, XangaTeam!
Please consider featuring my new content on your front page. Will listen to editing suggestions but keep the touchy language on my original entry)
Thanks guys, for sharing this conductive accumulation.High PR press release
Paying to join is such a bad idea....
That would likely work but xanga was the first social networking or blog site I had ever signed up for. Maybe just double authenticating email would be an option. You cant stop someone willing to hire a company to get around CAPTCHA but you can run up their costs by making them do it once on your site then twice more on your email authentication.
So we've had to switch gears a bit. After some brainstorming, we've come up with a few new ways we can try and prevent these humans-for-hire from creating fake accounts Rottweiler
So we've had to switch gears a bit. After some brainstorming, we've come up with a few new ways we can try and prevent these humans-for-hire from creating fake accounts Rottweiler
well at this point, i DO NOT CARE what needs to be done to fix themes. i have premium on three of my sites and i use them all and cannot change or edit themes at all. please do SOMETHING even if it is to create a FLAG that includes "SPAM SITE". you already have that in private messaging. please work with this community to solve this problem. everyone on xanga who is legit can easily FLAG the spammer site for shutdown.
Watch out for this list of trolls who rate Xangans' sites EX. Please block and report:asdfs13lkjlkjasdfs13lkjlkj32asdfs13lkjlkj32sdfsamshadhossainsdfsdfasdfsdfsdsssdddsfdfscadmelotAlert your friends and subscribers.
Several problems have arisen, regarding contacting Xanga. Used to be, I could get a personal response from SOMEBODY, be it "john" or whoever.Here are some of the problems:(1) When I click on "comments," 99 times out of 100 I get an error message that is something like, "doh, error loading this module, try again later." (2). In connection with (1), it often happens that the most recent comment(s) are NOT on one of the five most recently posted blogs, but are on something earlier.(3). In connection with (2), on the rare occasions I can access a recent comment on an old entry, it turns out to be (usually) a generic "Great writing" or some such that is clear evidence of a spammed comment.(4) And THAT type of comment is usually from some business such as THIS ONE, called layaayda but they're pretty much all alike.(5) I don't mind people using Xanga to try to make money, but can't you bar them anyway? I block them if I can find them, but please, how about some help here?(6) Finally, I would like a way to contact Xanga. Directly. In a way that gets a reply from a human being.Thank you.
This is an idea that's implemented in WordPress plugins. Have you guys looked into this kind of honey pot captcha:In a registration or comment form, put in a field and set the styles to display: none. This way, it's not visible to people, but it's visible to bots. You can do a check if something has filled in that field, and if it is filled, then most likely it's a bot.This obviously won't work if the user has CSS disabled in their browser.Perhaps you have already thought of this honey pot and bots from China have already figured this out, but this is something that many WordPress bloggers use, like smashingmagazine.com, and it seems to help them out quite well.
Nevermind, I just looked at your code, and it looks like you already thought of what I mentioned above Of course.I wouldn't mind authenticating through Facebook. For the second solution, how would that effect existing users? Does it even effect us, or is it only for new users? I probably would have never given Xanga a try if it wasn't free.
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It'd be great if you could do something about these jerks who keep giving perfectly good blogs an EX rating. I have so many friends whose sites I can no longer view thanks to these assholes. Maybe get rid of ratings altogether, that'd be a great start.
The EX rating issue is becoming nuts. If you guys could you need to keep EX ratings from blocking a site until its reviewed. Or maybe IP block those doing it. Ok they very well might be hiding their IPs to do that so review would be better
can I suggest a a filter from an email account? Only so many blogs allowed coming from the same account before it's rendered. Say 3 and then that email cannot be used again to creat an account.
Thanks for shutting down the several lists of trolls and spammers my friends and I sent to you guys. Here are more of the EX rating trolls:aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa1aaaaaabb111asdfsdf1sddsdsflkjsdflksjdflksfEXRATERThere are many more still active out there but my friends and I are compiling them to warn others and Xanga Team.
Note that EXRATER has been rating Xangans' sites EX for years.
Is this dude a splogger?http://davidotunga313.xanga.com/
1) AUTHENTICATE USERS FOR FREE: When someone is signing up for an account, we could ask them to authenticate to an outside account (say from Facebook or another login system with strong anti-spam controls - open to suggestions).I think it's important to allow people to sign up for free. I don't think requiring new users to be premium (even for a short period of time) is going to help Xanga.Nor do I think it's a good business model for Xanga to be dependent on Facebook to be a gateway for users. Why should someone sign up for Facebook to create a Xanga account? Wouldn't you be worried that they'd just stick to Facebook?Why not write a script to delete inactive blog pages after a certain time period automatically? Or require a minimum of content to be posted (to avoid sites with just a splog URL)?As for spammers, I think the best counter-measure is to give users the ability to approve comments before posting. If a spammer can't spam, that lessens the appeal.-netnguy
▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀While there are many security problems in Xanga, rating a site EX is just the tip of the iceberg, but it still should be addressed.Xanga staff, while I know you may be reading this (and perhaps doing nothing), consider removing the ratings feature entirely. If there is a problem with a page being X-Rated or what have you, we can certainly WRITE to let you know.Either that or reserve the EX rating solely for Xangan staff. The ratings system as is does more damage than good.As a programmer I might suggest you investigate sites that have EX ratings, and if the site really is X-rated, you could add to the choices, "CEX" which only staff can access, "Confirmed EX" and lock them out from standard Xanga society as the site owner would wish to be.I would also like to suggest you have moderated comments. Google's own blogging system, "Blogger" has this feature.Moderated comments means that if someone comments, the message is held invisible until CONFIRMED by the owner that it should appear. This would completely do away with all spammers, trolls, cyberbullies, and stalkers.Xanga staff would be completely relieved of all duty handling these troublesome users as their posts would only appear if the owner so decided it to via a checkmark confirmation system.And you could add a flood-gate filter too so no individual user could consecutively post more than 2-comments after each other at a time per same user's post per hour.Please consider ...
BTW, wishing Erica and Eugenia (who work for Xanga) a very ♣ Happy St. Patrick's Day ! ♣ [Greeting Card]
Thanks for giving us an opportunity to comment, but PLEASE don't require another account (like facebook - for those of us who don't have one) or have to pay. I like what others have said about the simple email authentication, if the user hasn't done so within a certain time period then delete their account.
I have my own site and they can bypass the captcha's . I've done some research and I think that they use software call captcha sniper. You can google it and see what I'm talking about. Its a real pain dealing with these people on my website.
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Shedding Pounds & Doubts is a place where you can get real feedback from a real fitness professional about your fitness doubts. If you have a question about nutrition, losing/gaining weight or exercising please stop by our website where you can submit questions and get back real answers. http://fitqa.blogspot.com/Shedding Pounds & Doubts is a place where you can get real feedback from a real fitness professional about your fitness doubts. If you have a question about nutrition, losing/gaining weight or exercising please stop by our website where you can submit questions and get back real answers. http://fitqa.blogspot.com/Shedding Pounds & Doubts is a place where you can get real feedback from a real fitness professional about your fitness doubts. If you have a question about nutrition, losing/gaining weight or exercising please stop by our website where you can submit questions and get back real answers. http://fitqa.blogspot.com/Shedding Pounds & Doubts is a place where you can get real feedback from a real fitness professional about your fitness doubts. If you have a question about nutrition, losing/gaining weight or exercising please stop by our website where you can submit questions and get back real answers. http://fitqa.blogspot.com/
How do I get help. The help does not help. I can not download my archive. It bombs out every time during the download.
I still can not download my archives. It does not help to send me a procedure for downloading the archive. I know how to get to the download. My problem is that the download starts and bombs out after 1.5 meg and does not finish the download. Please help.
Warning . I have been unable to reactivate my Premium because Internet Explorer cannot download the page with the link your sent to me : Click Here to Reactivate Your Premium! . This link is not working .Besides I cannot renew my plan premium in going directly on setting . Nothing is working.Weird . I always had Premium and I wanted to rectivate it..Something is going wrong in the system/And now I have advertissinng on my xangasite!!! Hopeful You can remedy In friendshipMichel fauquet
I for one am tired of nonexistant xangans trying to sell me shoes. Everyone knows I am morally opposed to shoes.
HI I just started a blog on Xanga and for some reason it won't let me upload a picture any advice?
I just started a blog on Xanga and it won't let me upload a profile picture do you know why?
all for it
The Xanga app for iPhone doesn't allow you to return from a clicked link back to Xanga. Everytime I open the app now all I get is read the webpage I clicked on. It's really annoying. How about you make like a back button, return to Xanga button, or something like that?
@GabrielleTheWitch - Are you using a smartphone? If so, you hafta use a pc or laptop I think. I wish they'd add functionality so that we could pull profile pics off our phones somehow
a good way is to install a deactivatiion app. if you can build a automatic deactivation for dead blogs (I get a few of those) say 90 days where unless they are making posts and getting responses (comments recs) the blog shuts down.
Another metohd would be to limit the actual amount of blogs made from one email account. spammers tend to make a fake email up andthen try to spew out dozens of fake blogs from one linked email account. If you can find a way to only say let 2-3 blogs be created from one email that would at least slow them down as they would have to keep making new email accounts to attach the splogs to.
linking it to another network or charging would defer too many people, they'd run to your comeptitors however you could process a card through as security and create a policy of fraud. If the account is a spam account, they'd be charged as a violation fee.
I wonder if the xanga program where xanga members are asked to report spam and examine blogs is still in progress? I remember the days I was asked to view videos and was asked to rate them for R rating. moleremover.org
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Force new members to validate email ...
China and India that do nothing but hire humans to defeat CAPTCHA tests. We've tried a number of technical fixes, but a lot of times the technical fixes prevent carpet cleaning nj
I think email authentication with captcha would be the best course to try before taking it further.
I also like "email authentication", lots of sites are using that and it is ok with me.Not sure if I want to link this to my FB nor do I want to buy premium.Good thing you guys are looking before you leap on this. Going forward with this could upset a lot of users and you may lose a lot (which would stink since the problem you are trying to solve is getting real users registered, so the very thing you want to do you might actually do worse by not thinking an idea through first. just a thought).
Uh, when are you guys going to fix your horribly broken mobile app?
I've had success with email authentication. Probably a good place to start.
@under_the_carpet - i like the idea of a trial period. also, livejournal has a housekeeping policy of deleting accounts that have been inactive (not posting any content) for 2 years. i think this could also help because any spam accounts that don't post any content (or any new content) would be shut down unless they post new stuff. and if they do post new stuff that's spam, then it's more obvious to identify them. of course, they prompt you by email first to warn you that your account will be shut down in 30 or 60 days if you don't login to the site/add a new post, and then an additional email to warn you that your account is shut down and will be cleaned out unless you want to reactivate it. it's a bit of a pain on your part (the xanga team), but i think it would definitely cut out the empty accounts lying across cyberspace.it would not require any linked access to other sites like facebook (like many other xangans, i keep my accounts all separate and private) and i don't think using premium would be effective because most people don't get premium, especially not when they first create an account.
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What I do like is perhaps making the first days or a week where the themes are unavailable. You just get use of the very basic account till you show you're an actual human who is going to use it properly. That also cures the issues of making those nasty 'mirror sites' that some folks love to do, plus it might even make those sites easier to spot, if new blogs suddenly request graphics that they are not authorized to use, from another user's site.(CCJ)business debt consolidationBusiness IVAbusiness IVACCJclick hereclick hereContact UsContact whatisdebtactully teamCountry Code Judgments (CCJ)credit card debt managementdebt actullydebt managementDebt Relief OrderDebt Relief Order processIndividual Voluntary ArrangementIVAmore infoOrder processour teamvisit nowvisit websitevoluntary bankruptcyWhat is business debt consolidation?What is debt actully?What is debt?What is voluntary bankruptcy?whatisdebtactully
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So we've had to switch gears a bit. After some brainstorming, we've come up with a few new ways we can try and prevent these humans-for-hire from creating fake accounts: מבחן פסיכומטרי
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I used to be more active with Xanga, but the people I used to help with creating and launching their Xanga campaigns quit so I just went into seclusion. I like being the one behind the curtain that no one sees but helps others be noticed.
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