Grab bag
I get so many links from various sources, linking to stories I do. Thought I’d link to some other good stories today.
I get my best stories from my referrers. Here’s some stuff
And now another spam hunter has bought a spammed domain out from under another spammer’s nose…
I notified Syllable (see this story), and they’ve posted their outrage on their front page:
Then there’s bloglines. Get some good stuff there too
Dirk caught a swede living in Thailand spamming. I did a little hoofing myself, and caught him talking about Sweden on newsgroups. Yep, he’s a Swede alright. I’m ashamed yet another Scandinavian is spamming.
Mike caught a phish for Katrina/Red Cross in his inbox. Be wary, people!
And then there’s regular haunts
The chongqed people have been talking about Oleg Popov (September 14 entry), the wiki spammer who put up a wiki directory. Halz had his post on the wiki deleted! Good comeback, Halz…
And finally e-mail tips:
Cary had his whole site framed by a ..scammer?. Yep, framed. As in the scammer provided the frames - with Adsense on them, and Cary provided the content. Very easy to spot if you’ve got referrer logs, but very hard to do something about, unless webhosts play ball. This story had a happy ending, fortunately. Hmmm, he said the guy took down his site. To me it looks more like the site is still there, but the database is gone? Hmmm…
Michael Pollitt had a similar story. This time it was a splogger who used an old article he’d done. Similar to rss abusing sploggers, in other words. Being Michael, he went one further, and researched the topic of splogs.
September 17th, 2005 at 10:19 am
Hello, and thanks for the write-up. Indeed, it now looks like the scammer site is back, but minus the DB…I’ll be keeping an eye on this one for sure.
Keep up the great work!
September 17th, 2005 at 12:32 pm
Hi Ann Elisabeth
Very interested in that comment about framing - can you say a bit more about what to look for in referrer logs?
Keep up the good work
John
September 17th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
Basically, you’ll find what looks like a normal referrer. Then when you check the referrer, you find your content.
That simple. And there might be a frame with varying types of “adornment” around your content.
September 17th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
If your site gets framed (as in what happened to Cary) there is an easy JavaScript solution:
That way if your page is loaded inside anyone’s frame it will reload your page without the frames. It is not a perfect solution and doesn’t get rid of the problem, but it might annoy the spammer enough he will quit framing your page.
September 17th, 2005 at 1:34 pm
Oops, I assumed WP would translate my JavaScript into text rather than removing it. Trying again:
<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
if (self != top) top.location.href = document.location.href;
// –></script>
September 19th, 2005 at 2:15 am
Thanks for the mention, Ann Elisabeth. I’m currently monitoring the splog I mentioned in my post using Bloglines. 200 posts from Friday to Sunday evening inclusive with each post having a link to a spamvertised site.
September 19th, 2005 at 3:14 am
OMG, that’s pretty bad!
Any chance of getting it pulled?
September 19th, 2005 at 8:22 am
And another 44 posts so far today. This is a serious splogger. I’m now looking for other WordPress-powered splogs. Found a couple easily using Google: www digitalcameras wholesalezz com/wp/ (a big one with over 4,500 posts) and www expireddomainbot com/blog
I’m going to keep monitoring for now.
September 20th, 2005 at 2:47 am
Many more posts added since I last looked so I’m seeing how effective Splog Reporter is.
September 22nd, 2005 at 5:09 am
Not sure it was because of Splog Reporter but the splog I reported has gone…more WordPress splogs have replaced it though. Details in my blog.