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(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Oct 17th 2005 3:37am





Blog Spam Goes Crazy

from the finding-the-content-needle-in-the-blog-haystack dept

There's been a lot of talk in the blogworld among people who watch blogs or use blog search about how much "blog spam" has been growing in the past few months. It's not entirely clear what the blog spammers get out of it, but they build a bunch of blogs, copying content from other blogs and generally clog up search engines. However, this weekend, something tipped -- and lots of people are noticing that the blog spam problem went from a nuisance to completely out of control. Apparently, some spammers wrote a script to create thousands upon thousands of spam blogs and basically render Google's Blogspot blog hosting platform useless. Yet another example of how any kind of automated system is eventually overcome by those looking to abuse the system leading to an ongoing horse-race between spammers and programmers.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Chris, Oct 17th, 2005 @ 5:23am

    Also known as "How to get the word 'blog' to appear on the page 21 times and still construct a coherent news blurb."

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Blogspam/Google/Blogspot

    identicon
    Omnibus Driver, Oct 17th, 2005 @ 7:13am

    Perhaps you are not aware that Blogspot added a word verification component that, at least for me, has completely wiped out comment spam? (Go here: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1203). Any Blogspot blogger who's not using it because it's too cumbersome is insane. I'd like to note further that while Hosting Matters and other blog hosting services have experienced multiple problems, Blogspot has been relatively trouble-free since Google bought them out. A free service that provides free tools to prevent blog spam? Hmmmm... maybe they ought to just make that little piece of the offering mandatory instead of self-selected.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Re: Blogspam/Google/Blogspot

    icon
    Mike (profile), Oct 17th, 2005 @ 7:21am

    It's not *comment* spam they're talking about, but *blog* spam. Blogs, not comments, that are created by spammers to drive traffic.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Re: Blogspam/Google/Blogspot

    identicon
    fantababy, Oct 17th, 2005 @ 8:23am

    yes, the blog spam is still there. one of my posts have been copied word by word and pasted in their own blogs just for the sake of getting some clicks. these people usually remove the blogger nav bar which helps in flagging (marking their blog as objectionable content). dont know how to tackle these fellows.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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