TypeKey Centralized!
Well, Six Apart has released more information on TypeKey, and it's everything I fear: a centralized login service for blogs creates a "lower barrier to comment registration" and helps "prevent comment spamming". It also has all my privacy and DDOS concerns baked right in. I've come to realize that TypeKey is a death knoll for my commenting on other blogs: if they all hook into TypeKey, I simply wouldn't have a choice BUT to signup with, and use, TypeKey. This does not make me happy, and I'll abstain quicker than to roll over. Shelley Powers, who has been echoing my concerns, agrees.
Sure, sure, TypeKey has a pretty privacy policy that says "we're not evil", but they'll still be able to log what sites I'm visiting and what sites I'm commenting on. As great as that may seem from a recommendation ("well, this person commented on this blog and that blog, maybe he'll like this blog or that one!") or implication ("the following blogs have received the most comments in the last five hours") viewpoint, it still rubs me the wrong way: if someone wants to use Google and find out that I commented on "Serial Killers Anonymous", that's fine. If someone wants to use TypeKey and find that I've commented on that site as well as "Weapon Auctions" and "Hiding Your Identity", that's a little too easy, too worrisome, and just not my cup of tea.
Granted, as before, TypeKey hasn't said they'll do any of this. And they may never get to that point (I suspect, however, they'll offer an opt-in service: it's too powerful of a data collection point to ignore). But the mere possibilities of it make it certifiable for me to never comment on TypeKey-enabled blogs again, not jump for joy at how much easier spam-free commenting will become.
I still worry, as before, about the server going down. If you've ever run mail servers, you've probably used an RBL of sorts - a blacklist of IPs that say "these have been reported as spam and I don't want to receive mail from them". There are tons of RBL's in existance, and last year, they started winking out of existence. Why? Spammers were launching concentrated attacks at them using trojan'd Win32 machines: the sheer amount of traffic the servers received was enough to disable them entirely. This, as well as email messages designed to lessen the effectiveness of Bayesian filters, are all tricks that spammers use to get their mail through. If TypeKey proves effective, it won't be able to stand up to a DDOS attack (if Microsoft, Yahoo, and eBay can't, what makes us think that Ben and Mena will?), and while it runs around figuring out router filtering rules (ha, ha, ha), blogs will be as susceptible as they were before (well, that really depends on MT: if TypeKey is down, will it deny or allow all comments?).
