From the what will the spammers (try to) ruin next department comes a series of del.icio.us popular links leading to splog pages.

Solutions
Yahoo could help out by filtering out exess results so no one user account ever fills up the popular list with more than 1 “most popular” thing? Crap from the spammer who loves internet today (pictured to right and a second screenshot from delicious/popular as of this writing) wouldn’t invade our RSS boxes, if there was a maximum of their most popular of the most popular hit the page. And if there were more than say three at one time, that should set of red flashing lights and spam alarms at Yahoo HQ.

Using Feed Rinse to filter RSS spam
Fortunately other tools exist to combat these situations like Feed Rinse. In less than a minute, I generated the following rinsed feed to filter out anything from this miscreant. You can subscribe here

Some publishers are against services like Feed Rinse but cases like this one make a strong case for protecting these tools. Last month Cory Doctorow wrote on Boing Boing:

This is a service that’s both so vital and so obvious that it’s practically an indictment of RSS feedreaders that they don’t all include this already.

I’d like to see a built-in plugin for Reblog that adds filtering functionality. In a world where there was unlimited time, I’d create one myself. If any other developer reader creates or locates one, please let me know.

Update 8:29am PST: Om noticed the problem this morning too.

• Feeling dirty or clean after using Feed Rinse
• del.icio.us feature request: English only or translation option
• Zawodny joins chorus of predictable blogger boos over MSN Spaces beta
• Boing Boinged out by SmartFilter
• Going virtually postal over Bill Gates email box
• TypePad support recommends using proxy to get around their own anti-spam filters