Proof of harvesting
I just got an e-mail to a spamtrap requesting a return link from one of my websites to: mybaby.net.au
They’d already added one of my pages to a specified subpage.
The thing is, that e-mail address is not connected with that website at all. …except it’s displayed (on the index page) below an image with this text:
The e-mail address below is a spamtrap. Do NOT e-mail. I feed all e-mail to that address to my spamfilters, unread.
None of my visitors have ever tried e-mailing me there…
So, it’s a scraper site, and should be blocked from Google. They boast PR3-4 and rising, so they (almost) know what they’re doing.
September 12th, 2006 at 6:48 am
Um, this is pretty stupid. Of course the site won;t be penalised by google. If that was the case, all in need to do is scrape away, bang of an email to the all the email addresses asking for a link to a competitors site, spoof their emial address(or not - who cares?) and BAM google penalty?
Spamhuntress, you are totally tripping that google will penalise a site, for such actions.
Google, does not penalise for email spam at all.
Um, Yep, I can see you are all down on spam, but I don;t think you know what you are talking about.
September 12th, 2006 at 7:00 am
apologies, english is not my first language what i meant was, google won’t penalise for “link request” emails like this, as it would be too easy to send out 20,000 such emails to harvested emails asking for links to a certain site… and keep doing it till the site was eventually penlalised.
It matters not that the site in that case would not be linking to you, all they need is a links section where you can add you own link, and refer to it in the email.
Spamhuntress, you may report sites to google all you want, I don;t think I;ve heard of even one such report resulting in a site banning, they only use such reports to fine tune their algoyrthm.
Yep, spam is bad. It does not result in google banning sites however. If you think otherwise, you are a goose.
September 12th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Hi Michelle, except for the flaming of the spamhuntress, i agree with you. Google does not appear to penalise for unsolicited emails, unless the emails demonstate they are trying to game google.
This comment So, it’s a scraper site, and should be blocked from Google.
The spamhuntress is making a statement of what Google should do in her opinion, Google does not ban sites for link requests, whether the email was scraped or not.
September 13th, 2006 at 2:08 am
I don’t know if they do or not, but even if Google does not ban a site from their search index or penalize its ranking for email spamming, Google provides many different services including email where it more likely to be blocked. Spam trap addresses are setup to catch spammers. Yes, they could have spammed the site anyway, but by using a spam trap address, you know it has to have come from a site scraper.
September 14th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Scraping is a different issue, to spam. The web site owner could just as easily sent a list of urls to a company in india, and asked them to visit each site to retireve the email addresses. They would have likely got far more this way anyway.
What difference does it make how the email was obtained to whether the email is spam or not?
September 14th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
The point many spam traps is to be able to detect and block scrapers from getting real addresses. If you can prevent them from scraping real addresses in the first place you don’t have to worry about filtering their spam. And for spam you do get at a spam trap address, you can be pretty sure if a similar message arrives to your real address it is spam without having to look at it.
Outsourcing scraping to be done by people in India does not make it any less wrong. They are mining websites for addresses that were put there so real users could email them, not so they can get hundereds of spam a day.
September 18th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Hi all, my name is Jasmine, its my website that sent the email to Spamhuntress. Nici, who has posted here, is my sister and just advised me about this site.
I used an application called Zeus to find and categorise websites that were relevant to my site topic, kids, teens, babies,families. The website the spamhuntress is talking about is this one http://www.nativecelebs.com/ and it comes up in a the dmoz category Kids and Teens: People and Society: Biography: Native Americans (86)
The zeus software does look for email addresses, then forces the user to classify a site to a category, and then choose an email address to send a link request to. I decided to stick with the categories as per dmoz structure and imported these into my database and matched the database structure.
I manually chose the email address that the spamhuntress was using as a spam trap, through simple user error. I had list of email addresses to select from, and when the http://www.nativecelebs.com/ site showed up it the zeus browser, the spam trap was not visible, as it was at the bottom of the page and I did not scroll down to check if the email was in fact a spam trap or not(as it turns out it was). I simply chose the one that seemed the best, and chose the first one that appeared on the home page.
So, I used software to help me identify relevant sites to link to from mine. I used software to help determine the correct email to send to, but had to manually review the site and email, so though I received assistance to find the email, I don;t think by definition, I phished, or scraped.
Google, has not penalised my site in any way, and are on the record as stating if ZEUS is used properly, then the links generated need not be viewed as spam, and the process of assitance in finding emails ZEUS provides, is not seen as phishing or scraping.
Certainly a bit silly of me to select the email without checking whether it was a spamtrap, but the Spamhuntresses assertions my site is a scraper site are incorrect. I visited all my link partners sites personally and approved all email addresses manually.
September 21st, 2006 at 6:04 am
Jasmine,
You said:
“I manually chose the email address that the spamhuntress was using as a spam trap, through simple user error. I had list of email addresses to select from…”
Which part of “no don’t email” didn’t you understand? What list of e-mail addresses? There was just one e-mail address on that page that was harvestable, and the username was: nodontemail.
I couldn’t be much clearer, could I?
September 21st, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Hi Ann .
Zeus software, parses emails from a site for the user and stores them in a table. Users categorise sites through an editor and choose and email, manually, there is no way to auto select one.
I looked at your site, thought it was ok to add to my site’s directory. I had two emails to choose from, the one on your home page and also this one (removed by moderator - don’t put my e-mail addresses anywhere in text!) from your whois data which I also imported.
I chose the one that appeared on the home page. I am German, and my english is not as good at I would like. I thought i was emailing “nodonte’s” mail account, nodonte being a native name. I did not scroll down your home page, and see the message not to use the email, there was no reason for me to suspect i needed to.
Clearer, would have been to name it spam@dontspamme.spam, but I guess this would defeat the purpose of a spam trap..
September 22nd, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Oops, sorry on email, I figured you would have your blog set to hide email addresses.
October 27th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
It seems as though there isn’t a penalization really anywhere for spamers but it seems to be part of life as those crazy calls from solicitors. Its just another way for someone else to do business, so as annoying as it is, andall the hate mail I will get for the comment, We just need to put guards up on our site and it will get better if ew don’t want to be bothered with it.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:59 am
The only thing Google bans sites for is…. trying to trick the Google bots to get a higher ranking… by doing illegitimate things to your own site.
If you guys REALLY care about this stuff, you need to educate yourselves about the way things in the spam world REALLY work — behind the scenes.
Study http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/ and http://www.spamcop.net
Beware though…. It is .net site. The .com version is a fake site.