Spammers Going After Referrer Logs/Trackbacks

from the ridiculous dept

Ah, yet another example of spammers who don’t get it (yes, redundant, I know). Pissing people off by tricking them is not good marketing. I’d argue that it’s not marketing at all – it’s lazy desperation from someone who can’t figure out a legitimate way to sell their product. The latest sleazy move by porn spammers is to try referral log spamming. Techdirt has been hit a few times, but nothing really noticeable. The way it works is that a porn site tricks its way into the referrer log of a blog. Normally, this wouldn’t make a difference because just one or two people who run the blog would see the referrals and wonder what they were. However, with the growing popularity of the “trackback” feature popular in Movable Type, some think the spammers are trying to get their porn links onto those lists. Others seem to think this is an incredibly stupid “grassroots” way of getting the blogging community to discover their sites. Either way, it’s a ridiculous way of trying to trick people into viewing your site. That doesn’t make anyone feel particualarly good about the site they’ve been “tricked” into viewing.


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