Hi folks. Got a few developments going on in the big ole blogosphere that you might be interested in.
Over the weekend, there was a slightly explosive growth of the number of Splogs
(or Spam Blogs) -- blogs specifically created to link to certain Web
sites in order to pump up the position of those Web sites in search
results, particularly Google's.
The way Google works is based on link relevance
-- there's a lot of formulae and voodoo around it, but basically, the
more people point to you, the more of an authority you're seen as on
certain things and the higher you show up in searches on those things.
Well, the spammers have taken advantage of how easy it
is to create blogs, by automating it so that they can pump out
thousands of spam blogs that point to a particular Web page, in the
hopes of raising that page's relevance.
Of prime concern right now is a combination of Blogger & Blogspot (blog creation and hosting services, both owned by Google, in an ironic twist, to abuse the definition of irony).
Google has responded by implementing CAPTCHAs
in their blog creation process (they're the squiggly graphics that are
hard enough to read by humans, and almost impossible for computers to
read).
Like all things spam, it's a constant battle between
spam and spam countermeasures. CAPTCHAs are not foolproof; in addition
to causing problems for the vision-impaired or anyone who's ever found
themselves wondering if that squiggly thing was an "S" or a "5", there
are ways to circumvent them.
In addition, you have to be
veeeerrrry careful before you start deleting blogs (believe me, we've
found this out the hard way); I know for certain that I've seen some
splogs here in J-Land, but in cases where the spammer isn't
machine-gunning hundreds or thousands of splogs at a time, it can be a
lot less clear-cut.
There's some salty, vaguely ham-flavored food for thought. Thanks -- Joe
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6 comments:
I had to pull the plug on my RSS searches for photography topics because the results were loaded with spam blogs. The tags I'm subscribed to are also getting hit, but not as bad as the search returns were.
I've seen spam blogs here on AOL Journals. Not in any great number, but they are here. I've found spam blogs on blogspot that link to a spam blog here on Journals. Online Pharmacy thing.
h
hugs and keep up the good work!
natalie
What I find particularly annoying is that with the constant barrage of garbage in everyone's inbox, blog, etc., and the media, corporate, and federal government giving so much attention to spam, somehow it remains profitable. It boggles my mind.
Peace and love,
Charley
http://journals.aol.com/CDittric77/Courage
Spam is profitable because it works to some degree (some people insist on buying from spammers, or a splogged Web site may show up higher in searches) and the costs are so low.
You can jack up the costs of sending mail or creating blogs to raise costs for the spammers, but that also raises the costs for you and I.
Anyway, the fight against spam will continue, and will be fought on multiple fronts, including technology, policy and economics. -- Joe
h
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