As I've mentioned here before, I write an open source URL shortening service. I also operate one publicly since that was the only way I was ever going to get useful real world data to work with. To look at the code though, you'd think I run an anti-abuse system that also shortens URLs. So goes the Internet I guess. While I have a tiny number of users relative to any URL shortening service you've ever heard of, a couple of thousand people have downloaded the software, and I'm aware of a couple of dozen public installations. Between all the ones that may be out there, we might just produce enough abuse data to make it worth someone's while to use it.
As I'm about to do a lot of work on the software in preparation for a new release, I'd like to get anyone's thoughts about the following: 1. Interest: Is anyone interested in using URI abuse data produced by URL shorteners?
2. Ideal way to supply the data: I'd rather supply it to SURBL or some other well-run URI BL for inclusion in an existing URI BL service than operate one for this purpose. I'm looking to use anything that remotely resembles standards for everyone's sake, rather than re-invent the wheel.
3. Trust/Reputation: I've discovered on a couple of occasions that I'd been using on my mail server abuse data from shoddily run operations, and frankly this is much much worse than getting some spam. I don't intend to be Yet Another Irresponsible BL Operator running an absentee automated blocklist data source. Yet, in order to have enough data to be worth sending somewhere, I'm going to need to accept input from my users, both of the service, and of the source code. I plan on doing something similar to Craigslist whereby people can report abuse from the web site and a certain number of complaints will disable the redirection. As for my source code users, I think I need some kind of reputation system. Any thoughts about this would be appreciated.
- Ron