Do You Lock Your Doors?

"Key Note" by william.neuheisel
Attribution License

Have you had trouble with spammers, phishers or other internet interlopers? Many of my Professional Learning Network, including me, have recently experienced troubles with our various interactive social networks, including blog comments and Twitter. There is also the less obvious, yet serious problem: thieves that steal your postings without attributing the work to you.

Do You Lock Your Online Doors? In the beginning, I didn't, but now I do. At first, I just tried to avoid the issue of phishing, spamming and theft. I ignored the Direct Messages, deleted the spam comments and stopped blogging. From my own experiences, that makes you more vulnerable which seems to be just what these people want. Just as you do at your own home, I would like to recommend that you take a more proactive stance against personal attacks. To begin with, I'd suggest that you LOCK YOUR DOORS!

The first time a phisher captured my Twitter account, I thought it was an accident. This first phisher was an educational group communicating with me. Eventually, as I discussed the problem on Twitter, they stopped sending their tweets of new blog posts in my name.

Unlocking by Gabriela Camerotti
Attribution-NonCommercial License

Even after that experience, I was naive. I didn't realize that some SEO's follow you with the hope that you will follow them. When you do follow them, they stop following you. They capture your Direct Messages to promote their new products, games, or blog posts. When you call their attention to it, they don't know what you are talking about since they don't even follow you. I wonder if you have had any similar experience?

Finally, I changed my password. That was very aggravating, but it did stop the phishing. I had to remember: "Lock the Doors!".

Another recent problem is spamming comments on my blog posts. Some of my professional learning network recommended allowing comments to go right to my blog, and I believed that would allow people to comment with the least trouble. That worked well for me for over two years, yet "a good deed never goes unpunished". Do you still allow open commenting without approval? If so, how do you deal with spammers?

Over the past two months, I've had at least five different spammers attack my blog comments section. I didn't notice it at first, as they were adding their spam comments to my older posts. Fortunately, I found them in the email notifications when new comments appear on my blog.

I wanted to counteract the spamming, but still allow unrestricted comments on my new posts. These are some of the measures that I instituted for this blog.

I locked down the comment postings on my old posts, and these comments had to be approved before they would be posted. That worked for about a week, but the spammers started direct attacks on my new posts. Has this happened to you?

In the end, I've changed all my blog comments approval system. Your comments must be approved before they will appear on my blog. Philosophically, I'm opposed to that. I want my readers to KNOW that all comments will be posted. I want to assure you that all comments, negative or positive, will be posted, unless they are off-topic spamming. How are you solving this blog comment spamming problem?

The last problem is the most offensive to me personally, just because it is so personal. I use one of the most generous Creative Commons copyrighting licenses available, but some people ignore it. They seem so desperate to appear creative and original that they don't make attributions of other blogger's work on their blog posts. Have you experienced this problem?

How did I discover it? Just as I discover cheaters in my classes, they usually give themselves up. Many are loosely connected to me in my professional learning network (PLN). When they advertise a new blog post about a topic of interest to me, I want to read it. My original intent is to learn more, but then I'm disappointed to find they use the same links that I've found to discuss the same idea from MY perspective. What's worse is the use of direct quotes from my blog posts without attributions. I'm flattered that they take my ideas or my words, but I would appreciate a simple link to my original article.

How are you dealing with this phenomena? My original response was to stop posting. That's a dead end proposal, because I want to write about my ideas, experiences and practices.

YouTube, Copyright and Lucacept

Are you developing lessons on Acceptable Use Practices, copyright issues, or Creative Commons? Then you may be interested in my discussion of this topic, as well as a wonderful blog posting by Jenny Luca at lucacept with her questions about the trends in copyright, education, students, the internet and teachers, YouTube and Copyright: the dilemma for educators.

Jenny ends her posting with these thoughtful questions.

I’m wondering about the future of copyright and what may happen now that user generated content is really taking off. Will we see a backlash against copyright regulations? Will we see users post their content and stipulate that it can be used and reformatted so that educators can employ it in classrooms to convey important messages? Will more people use creative commons licences to allow their work to be used easily in educational settings? Will the copyright council be able to stem the flow of infringements to the law as more and more educators realise the potential benefits of YouTube to provide useful content for classroom instruction?

This is my response, and I am responsible for my opinions and statements on this topic. Thanks go to those who prompted me to think of these topics, but they are in no way responsible for any of my opinions or statements here.

Your insightful lessons using YouTube must encourage students to upload their work [there], and this is a wonderful extension of this popular media venue into their educational life.

Thanks for the tip on downloading before the lesson. That would help prevent ruined lessons from technical malfunctions.

Hopefully, Creative Commons Copyright will become more prevalent. I use the Share-alike Copyright, in my work, and I encourage others to consider it. Even though some dispute it, teachers have permission to use work under American copyright for educational purposes.

I follow Lawrence Lessig's lessons and stories(Free Culture) on what happened when business became more important that expression.

I am all for making money, yet I agree with those who believe that family or corporate empires don't need to be maintained from one person's or group's work. For example, our new copyright laws directly favored Sonny Bono's widow (who replaced him in the US Congress, after his untimely death while on a SKI TRIP).

I am not sure why the work of Sonny Bono is more important than the work of John Phillip Sousa, but hey you never know.

Lawrence Lessig,[Stanford law professor] gives an excellent Ted speech about John Phillip Sousa's active disagreement with long copyrights. Sousa believed that we would have a more creative, richer world if people were allowed to have access to copyrighted work after a much shorter time than we have now. I agree.

Thanks for discussing this important topic.