Destroy all Malware

Trackback is for SPAMmers

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:33:36 GMT

I think it's about time that people disable trackback from their blogs. My own blogs reject hundreds of trackback SPAMs per day. In fact, my BlogSpirit test blog is simply littered with them, because BlogSpirit doesn't have adequate default trackback SPAM protection. Worse is that BlogSpirit does not rel='NOFOLLOW' the links. Neither did I receive an trackback notifications and as such, the farm of SPAM links has grown to a an uncontrollable state. I changed the default settings to basically disallow trackbacks on that blog going forward. I suggest all other do the same and I suggest BlogSpirit change their defaults. In the next while, I'll begin removing all the trackbacks from my own blogs and I plan on 404ing the trackback URLs to stop the tide.

Splogs: Plagiarism En Masse

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 17:50:09 GMT

Plagiarism Today: The term splog, or spam blog, is defined as a blog that’s designed solely to either promote another site, gain ad impressions or used to increase page rank. Generally speaking, these sites contain a great deal of content that is either pure nonsense or stolen from other sites.

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/?p=117

Randy: JB goes on to discuss about Adsense and BlogSpot and their role in the splogosphere mess. Great thoughts!

Delete this Pink Text

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 17:09:31 GMT

Matt Cutts has been documenting some pretty hilariously lazy Web campaigns.

How about Word Verification?

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 14:40:17 GMT

Amit Agarwal: In an effort to reduce comment spam, Randy of the RSS Blog has decided to delete any new comment that links to blogspot.com blogs. [cut] Randy: I know blog comment spam is the most irritating thing but how about adding word verification kind of a thing.

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/11/randy-morin-does-mark-cuban.html

Randy: If word verification actually worked, then blogspot.com wouldn't be infested in the first place. Word verification is bad for accessibility. I said it once, no twice, no too many times and I'll say it again, CAPTCHAS don't work. But now, I have evidence (Blogspot) to prove it.

Blogspot Comment SPAM

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 18:12:48 GMT

Of late, I'm receiving an enormous amount of comment SPAM that links to splogs on Blogspot.com. Unfortunately, this means that I'm gonna have to add ".blogspot.com" to my kill file. This will prevent any new comments with links to blogspot.com blogs and delete any existing comments with links to blogspot.com. Even legitimate comments. This will apply across all blogs hosted on kbcafe.com.

E-mail security advisory

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:27:59 GMT

Niall Kennedy: The e-mail in question states that Technorati has suspended your e-mail account, lists some reasons why this may have happened, and invites you to open an attached file for more details on how to reactivate your Technorati account. The attached file, "important-details.zip," contains the W32.Mytob.LD@mm virus, opening a back door on your computer, lowering security settings, and allowing your computer to be used by the attackers for local access or distributing other content online.

http://www.technorati.com/weblog/2005/11/62.html

Randy: +1 Karma to Technorati for moving on this one.

Technorati SpamSplogs Inc.

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:19:22 GMT

Coolz0r: When I was checking Technorati these last few weeks, it became clear they still have a serious splog and spam issue to deal with.

http://blog.coolz0r.com/posted/technorati-spamsplogs-inc.html

Note: The coolz0r.com domain is currently experiencing DNS issues.

#20 on Feedster

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:40:07 GMT

Feedster released their November/December rankings and placed the Destroy all Malware blog at #20.

http://top500.feedster.com/

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Referrer SPAM DoS attack?

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:57:57 GMT

Danny Ayers reports getting so much referrer SPAM that it's affecting the performance of his Website.

Matt Cutts Interviewed

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 19:37:59 GMT

Philipp Lenssen interviewed Matt Cutts, the blogger and Google employee who seems most concerned with SPAM. Topics covered include nofollow and webspam.

http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-11-17-n52.html

e-ma1l 5PAM 1s w0rSe th en EVAR!

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:44:40 GMT

Everyday lately, I break new records for SPAM received. It's been on a constant rise for several weeks now and I've received more than 21000 over the last 30 days (or 700/day). Beyond the simple volume, more and more SPAM is escaping Gmail's SPAM filter (15%). The SPAMmers are writing very clever HTML to by-pass the filters. But, much of the email that is escaping Gmail's SPAM filter is pretty obviously SPAM. I've gotten several hundred emails with links to weblog dot ro and were not filtered out by Gmail. I had to create a manual filter to trash anything with that domain name. Another problem site that is escaping Gmail is o3 dot indiatimes dot com. Seems pretty easy to create a rule to simply kill anything with links to those sites. But, what is really weird is that the o3 guys are by-passing the Gmail SPAM filter with little effort. I got one email from them and the email address had pokerman and texas-holdem in it, the sender name was forex trading, the subject was forex trading and the link had the path /forex/. How did they misdiagnose that?

Stop Indexing Blogspot

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 20:52:57 GMT

Note to David Sifry. Stop indexing blogs hosted at Blogspot or I will stop using Technorati altogether. Even Google has stopped indexing Blogspot blogs. 50+ more Blogspot referrals since my discovery of 70+ this morning.

Sony to pull controversial CDs, offer swap

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:28:57 GMT

USA Today: Sony BMG Music Entertainment said Monday it will pull some of its most popular CDs from stores in response to backlash over copy-protection software on the discs.

Randy: The blogosphere strikes again!

More BlogSpot Splogs

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 14:59:07 GMT

This morning, I woke up again to dozens (76 to be exact) of Blogspot splogs populating my inbox and in the last 24 hours, I've had to manually tag hundreds of emails as SPAM (I use Gmail). It would seem that things are getting worse, not better. A bad note again on Google, the Blogspot splogs were not in my Google blogs search. So, either Google isn't indexing their own blogging service, or they are removing the splogs from their index, but leaving them online. Not very pleased. It would seem Google is now struggling with all sorts of malware.

Here's One More Thing to Hate

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:45:00 GMT

Newsweek: That's right—in addition to e-mail spam and instant messenger spam (spim), there's a new form of exploiting the Net's openness—splogs.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10017786/site/newsweek/

Randy: Great news! Newsweek is running an article on splogs in the Nov. 21 2005 issue.

Sony's Rootkit

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:03:00 GMT

I'm not gonna claim to know anything about Sony's rootkit, but it's definately been the talk of the blogosphere this last week. Let's just enumerate the news.

Microsoft's new Anti-Malware Engineering Team blog says "will add a detection and removal signature for the rootkit component of the XCP software". That's a pretty clear sign that Microsoft doesn't like it.
Cory Doctorow is linking to a new Sony malware discussion. Rootkit is not the only malware they are installing on your machines?
The EFF is also up-in-arms about the rootkit. Posting six times this month on the subject.

I've read the arguments and to-date I'm not really convinced either way that it's malware or not. It's definately a PR nightmare for Sony and a dumb mistake made.

BlogSpot is Dead!

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:00:25 GMT

This morning was another bad day for Blogger.com and Google. I found 57 splog referrers from BlogSpot and forwarded them to Matt at Google. Basically, Google doesn't seem to be capable of stopping the splogs. IMHO, the recent splogs on Blogspot have easily identified patterns that make them easy to pick off. How Google is not able to identify and remove them is beyond me? IceRocket already has kicked them out of their index. I now have to agree with Mark Cuban and Blake Rhodes. This is now the only way that a Blogosphere search engine can move forward with reasonably clean results. I also note that Google doesn't show these blogs in Google's blog search, but haven't disabled the accounts. That seems like dirty pool to me. If you host on Blogspot, then don't expect me to point to you or find you anymore. BlogSpot is Dead!

FTC Shuts Down Spyware Operation

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:36:15 GMT

FTC: An operation that uses the lure of free lyric files, browser upgrades, and ring tones to download spyware and adware on consumers’ computers has been ordered to halt its illegal downloads by a U.S. District Court at the request of the Federal Trade Commission. The court also halted the deceptive downloads of an affiliate who helped spread the malicious software by offering blogs free background music.

http://ftc.gov/opa/2005/11/enternet.htm

Randy: Great to see the U.S. government coming to the plate.

Blogspot #2 SPAM Host

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:16:26 GMT

Lately, I've notice that I get more email SPAM, comment SPAM and search engine SPAM from weblog dot ro (no Juice) than Blogspot. If anybody who reads Romanian can tell me more about this blog hosting service, then I'd be much obliged. Is this a ligitimate blog hosting service, or do they just host splogs? How many blogs do they host? How much of it is splogs?

Nomations for Splog Fighters of the Year

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 21:53:52 GMT

Just a small list of people I've noticed are helping the fight against splogs. Please comment with other nominations.

SplogSense Closed

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 04:33:27 GMT

I just noticed that one of the SplogSense accounts that I reported was disabled. Thanks Google!

Define SplogSense: A splog (spam blog) that has AdSense ads.

Splogs Alert

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 03:27:49 GMT

I noticed a new farm of splogs just went live on Blogspot. I got 20 new Blogspot splog referrers in the last 2 hours. There's obviously somebody at Google who is in charge of preventing, tracking and removing those Blogspot splogs. That person should be fired.

Email SPAM on the Rise?

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 15:30:06 GMT

I generally track email SPAM by how many emails are in my Gmail SPAM box. Of late, this number has been on the rise and I've now received 20k SPAM emails in the last 30 days. I've also noticed an equivalent rise in blog comment SPAM.

Buy Software Cheap Now!

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 20:47:36 GMT

Marcel Marchon got a very interesting looking email SPAM today.

http://blog.lazytom.com/2005/11/hmm-what-website-does-this-remind-you.html

Nigeria's Latest Anti-Scam Effort?

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 17:19:19 GMT

techdirt: The Nigerian government's latest "effort" is to just to help warn people about the scams, putting out statements for the folks out there who still don't seem to recognize this is a scam.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20051104/0934226_F.shtml

Ticketmaster is a spammer

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 15:59:06 GMT

Mark Pincus: When are we going to collectively wake up and start holding these companies and their ceo's accountable?

http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/2005/11/ticketmaster_is.html

Randy: There's multiple levels of SPAM. Irrelevant SPAM is definitely unwanted. Viagra, MBAs, etc. I get between 10-15 thousand of these per month. Now, those SPAM are generally irrelevant, but some people actually use Viagra and to them, Viagra SPAM is relevant SPAM. That said, the vast majority of recipients of Viagra SPAM don't consider it relevant. This is the type of SPAM that is reducing the utility of email. What Ticketmaster is doing is producing relevant SPAM. Since you've already bought product, it's very likely that you are interested in buying more product from them. Now, I'm not defending them, but I think this is a secondary level of SPAM that isn't as problematic as the first. MHO.

Windows Live Safety Center Beta

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:58:54 GMT

About: Windows Live Safety Center is a new, free service designed to help ensure the health of your PC.

http://safety.live.com/

Randy: This is an absolutely amazing site for home users who want to protect their computers from all sorts of malware and general health problems.

Google Splogs

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:55:32 GMT

Last week, I reported that Google wasn't acting on the splogs that I was submitting to them. I was immediately contacted by two employees at Google; Jason Goldman and Matt Cutts. BTW, I've been reading Matt's blog for quite some time and it's a must read for SEO types Subscribe. I forwarded all the URLs to Jason and Matt and they have forwarded them to the appropriate groups at Google. Matt immediately thru the domains out of the Google index. I also noted that all the Blogspot splogs have been removed. The AdSense team on the other hand has been slow to re-act. In fact, I still can't find any blogs where the AdSense account was terminated. Congrats to the Google Blogger.com team and the Google index team! But get your brethren into the game.