Spam, Spam, Spam
Do any of you bloggers have trouble with spam?
Since Christmas I have been bombarded with ‘hits’ from a number of rogue sites (they don’t exist), each time leaving a record of their name in the Last Referrers or Top Referrers lists on the Statistics page of the blog - which you reach when you click on ‘Some Viewing Statistics’
You won’t see any now, because every day I delete referrers with obscure or sexually explicit names. Trouble is they seem to come up on google searches when the culprits do a search on their particular name.
I can’t see what is in it for spammers to do this! They don’t seem to achieve anything tangible. Yes, it inconveniences me and the thousands of others they are spamming but I just delete them as they come in -part of the housekeeping as I see it.
But today marks the beginning of a new spamming phenomenon. Between 8 am this morning and 1:30 I received 18 Comments posted in various places throughout my blog - all allegedly coming from an online casino with the name texas in it. The messages are all platitudes of this sort:
If justice and righteousness perish, human life would no longer have any value in the world. by internet poker
I know from the information I receive with the comment that the message hasn’t originated with the casino so they will feel equally aggrieved by the work of the spammers.
So if anyone has any information, experience or solutions to this I would be pleased to hear from you (unless you are the Spammer in which case I don’t want to hear from you again). And if you come across a comment that just doesn’t really seem to belong in this blog - chances are it’s spam that I have got rid of yet.
March 2nd, 2005 at 3:03 pm
I’ve posted quite a lot about this recently, including today. If you’re interested in what’s behind this, read the post and the links.
Long story short, you aren’t alone - this is happening to blogs all over the web.
March 2nd, 2005 at 8:39 pm
Hi, the link to netaloid worked out O.K. and it is an interesting site explaining what is going on.
Paul.
March 2nd, 2005 at 10:37 pm
Hi loid and Paul - thanks for your comments - I am about to reading your posts about spam now, loid!! I have just discovered a ‘one button’ delete which has rid me of the 72 posted comments I received today! Happy about that - look forward to reading more about what this is about!! Thanks again. Ron
March 3rd, 2005 at 11:13 am
If you find spam coming from one of the more reputable ISP’s such as Yahoo they have a very easy way of stoping it. They just shut down the site. All you do is email the spam and the email header to abuse@yahoo and byebye spammer. Details are on Yahoo’s site. Google are the same. Whether the others are or not I don’t know. Needless to say, if spam receivers don’t do anything nothing will happen, so really it is up to everyone to complain as much as possible.
I am investigating the possibilities of returning the compliment to spammers by placing a few thousand ficticious credit card orders on each site that the spammers promote, so that they will have all the fun of sorting it out like we do. Could be very satisfying!
Martin
March 3rd, 2005 at 11:51 am
Martin - the spams don’t come through Google or Yahoo, etc. The stated URL is an online casino (which is a real site) (go there to see and you’ve already increased their traffic!!) but the messages come from a variety of PC addresses - in a number of countries around the world. Of the 84 ‘comments’ I received yesterday, all appear to come from different PC addresses - ban em? One at a time? Try to visit the domain the comment came from? No such domain…
Visit loid’s blog - link listed above, to read an interesting insight to what is going on with a specific spammer - the one who has been commenting on my site - as well as many others!! I’d be interested in your reactions!!
I will be following his progress in challenging what is going on and supporting his petition.
Ron
March 3rd, 2005 at 7:45 pm
Agreed that this is the official way of doing it, but I bet (pun) that if their gaming site was jammed solid by a few thousand ficticious punters they would take the hint and stop spamming!
Martin
March 4th, 2005 at 9:25 am
Hi Martin - or the casinos would complain they are victims of an Eastern European scam to blackmail them and shut down their sites - like they did recently. However - they should remember, what goes around, comes around! Ron
March 4th, 2005 at 10:43 pm
I’ve been fighting this spam problem for quite a few months and also found that you can’t report it to yahoo because they require the source address in the email header which isn’t always available as the other commenter has noted. I would love to fight spam with spam and give em a taste of their own medicine as well but this is also illegal. In the end, I used the MT Blacklist at my site and just blocked all http or www sites because when it comes to comments, I rarely need someone to mention the specific address of some website and that link is what the spammers goal is. I’ve reduced the blacklist down from nearly 4000 entries to just a handful. One or two is all I really need. I came up with this idea when I was sitting there deleting up to 200 spam comments a day. It’s been about a month of being spam free now…
March 7th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Hi lei
I have been busy looking at the ‘back office’ arrangements on my blogging software to ban spam - and think things may be better - for the moment! Good to hear from you - I don’t think I mentioned anywhere earlier I was born and grew up around Toronto.
All the best
Ron