This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.
This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.
29 Jul 2004
The arms race against comment spammers has been stepped up a notch. I received a flurry of spam that linked to entries on other blogs. Curious to see what that was all about, I clicked on one of the links, fully expecting to be redirected to porn or an online casino. I was surprised to see a discussion of patent law; this comment spam linked to a legitimate site.
The comment that I received was certainly spam — other than the odd link, it was the typical formula: the name was “online casinos,” fake generic email address, and a vapid comment. Certainly a Stanford law professor hadn’t actually sent the spam. There was another reason this spammer was promoting someone else’s blog entry.The blog entry in question was full of comment spam. In the last 3 months, this entry had accumulated thousands of spam links in the comments.
It appears the spammers have a new tactic in increasing their PageRank. They find a site that doesn’t delete comment spam and fill it with links. Then they boost the PR of that site by spamming it in blog comments. Once the spam-friendly’s site has in increased Google ranking, all those spammed links in their comments will get a boost in rank as well.
It’s rather clever, actually.
I’m leaving out a link to the spam-ridden blog entry on purpose. I don’t want to give the spammers the link they want. If you want to see the page in question, find Elizabeth Rader’s March 1, 2004 entry called “All rights reserved in Birth Control for Flatworms” on cyberlaw.stanford.edu.
If you are a site that is apathetic toward link spam, it is now time to choose a side. If you continue your apathy and allow comment spam links to linger on your site you are helping the spammers. Spam friendly sites will now be placed on the list of blacklisted domains that are not allowed to post comments on this site.
In the war on spam if you are not for us; if you choose to look the other way and allow spammers to use your site; if you feel that keeping your site free from spam is too much trouble — you are against us.
block these ugly comment spammers plz
What if the comments actually contribute to the subject in hand? I think that comments shouldn’t be open to non-users of the site, so there will be more control over them. Otherwise, it will always drag non-wanted results.
I think what we need is a “black hole” of IP addresses who are posting the spam, and probably represent machines that are infected with malware. Chances are, nothing from these addresses, blog comments, email or USENET posts, is for real.
Speaking of innovative solutions, I’ve just released a product into Beta which specifically targets Comment Spam. If anyone is interested in being on the test and trial team, please let me know by visiting the website above and registering. The solution does not require any installed software or hardware, it’s a web based service which I think is quite innovative and has great potential. Of course there’s no obligation but the more testers the better the final offering will be. I’m happy to give out free acounts to testers.
thanks Darren Crocker
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Adam Kalsey
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Richard D. LeCour
November 2, 2004 9:48 PM
I stand firmly on the side against the spammers. It’s a battle I fought myself for a long time until I installed MTBlacklist (I had one idiot post hundreds of comments on my site in one evening, and I had to manually remove them all!) Movable Type has done a lot to help prevent blog spamming with it’s new version (which I won’t be installing since I don’t want to pay more than I already have in donations), but it is up the blog owner to really fight the battle. I am very disappointed when I see blogs that don’t police their blogs and end up by supporting spammers with apathy and nonaction.