It’s wrong. The profitability of a scheme is not justification for its methods.

Yes, go ahead and tell us spam is ever present - that’s something we all know. Here’s the catch: We get to choose what enters our lives. Freedom of choice supercedes freedom to spam.

What else can you come up with? Forums are akin to the hosting homes of social groups. It is our legal right to maintain control, which we will do, regardless of your selfish blatherskite.

Keep it up, Spamhuntress - and to the spammers out there: Get over yourselves.

I really don’t want to read over all of spamhuntresses posts but there have been a few
times that I can remember just off the top of my head where she has labelled sites as spammers when it is clearly running a referal scheme and it is infact an affiliate user who is spamming.

An affiliate scheme should of course be recognised as such by a spam hunter (or ~ress). That is, if a spammer is hammering a site with redirects to:
superadultsponsor.xx/search.php?aid=012345&q=boozy+gonzo
Then it might not be a good idea to blame the site owner. In this case the right step is of course to notify the sponsor of his abusive affiliate, provided that the sponsor’s rules clearly outline web spam as advertisment.

Another variation is a spammer who installed his spamilki on the same server where his sites are or within his rented netspace. This is fairly easy to identify and if all sites hosted there contain info that’s known to be associated with this person, there’s a good chance to have at least the spambot terminated. Not all hosters would go as far as LayeredTech and send a 24hrs takedown notice on the grounds of spamvertisement, but they do demand from their customer to cease this action.

Another typical (although less often) scenario: Someone from a marketing firm is spamvertising for their clients. Here’s not necessarily a connection between the spammer and the spamvertised party aside from the task of spamming, as the marketing firm may only offer “link building” and has nothing to do with hosting or registering domains let alone web design.

And finally, let’s not forget Joe jobs (not the one posting here ;-)): Out of personal animosity someone is impersonating a victim he likes to take revenge on and leaves no spam variation untouched (gibberish doorways, silly comment spam and referrer spam) to harm the victim.

So why am I mentioning it? It’s vital that someone dealing with combatting spam is able to recognise and differentiate these four cases. When in doubt, it’s better to play safe and let spam happen than to accuse an innocent party. So from that, I would even partly agree with you.

Also just because a website is being spammed does not mean it is being done by the owner of the domain. The spamhuntress could easily drop herself in legal hot water if she continues to post WHOIS information and state people are spammers without proof that it was actually *that* person spamming.

That’s correct. You can’t accuse someone of something unless you can back up your claims with evidence.

Vasily, I really don’t understand your attitude about spamming not generating a good reliable income.

Esrun, please reread my comments. I didn’t write that it wouldn’t generate income but that a few persons may be able to live from it. the few spammers who are lucky in this game aren’t representative for the overall amount of participants. And the work associated with maintaining the revenue stream is quite time and money consuming, the constant process of aquiring new domains get rid of old ones, back up plans for sudden cancels upon complaints and the likes. Some people came to the conclusion that it’s not worth it (despite having had a decent income):
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=65874

Why does it matter if it only lasts a few years… do you realise how much money a webspammer can make a day? A spammer only has to operate for a year before they can afford to retire.

See, there we are again with your generalisation. A small percentage may be able to do so, but these are the people who’ve been in it for a couple of years and have an vital interest to keep it up this way. Others start to propagate their strategies via an affiliate programme by making similar promises to those who purchase their “success products”. But seriously, how many people will ever come this far?

Aposed to a spam hunter who makes no money and spends hours of their time each day on a lost cause.

Sorry Esrun, but that’a is a silly prejudice. There are spam hunters who do get paid for their work and are developing strategies to combat spam. There are volunteers cooperating with each other, contributing to blacklists and so forth. Sometimes these are admins who needed to compile a list or investigate a case anyway. So from that it’s not a lost cause, for that would imply that websites get plastered with spam independent of precautions taken. And that’s definetly not the case.

Vasily

Find: ‘FORUM_DESC’ => $forum_data[$j]['forum_desc'],

Replace with: ‘FORUM_DESC’ => htmlspecialchars($forum_data[$j]['forum_desc']),

What this did was disable HTML from being allowed in the description of the forum or topic.

[/Problem Solved.]

Early on I made a few mistakes with regard to affiliate programs, you’re right about that one. Where I’ve realized my mistake, I’ve updated the posts. There might be some forgotten pages early on, but you only got to page 14, right?

In the beginning I was probably a bit more naive than I am now. I think you’re reading into what I write a lot more than I’m actually writing. These days I seldom say straight out that a specific person is a spammer. I need to be pretty sure first. That doesn’t mean I’ll refrain from publishing whois info. The information is public, and most spammers know that. It’s a risk of doing business. Some don’t care, and some use fake info.

That whois info is what connects spam hunters. One spam hunter search for a specific name server or e-mail address, and finds what another spam hunter has written. You know, you should REALLY have a look at NANAE. If you think *I* am bad, you just have NO idea what’s going on out there!

And you’re saying I make no money on what I do?

I think you’ve got the wrong idea… I don’t make money on this directly, but it’s a heck of a resume, and has been instrumental in securing better jobs for me… I’m still looking for new challenges, and the best way to do that, is to stay on top of this game, since I’ve managed to crawl up there in the first place.

You do not upset spammers, simply serve as an irritant.

I really don’t want to read over all of spamhuntresses posts but there have been a few times that I can remember just off the top of my head where she has labelled sites as spammers when it is clearly running a referal scheme and it is infact an affiliate user who is spamming.

Also just because a website is being spammed does not mean it is being done by the owner of the domain. The spamhuntress could easily drop herself in legal hot water if she continues to post WHOIS information and state people are spammers without proof that it was actually *that* person spamming.

Vasily, I really don’t understand your attitude about spamming not generating a good reliable income. Why does it matter if it only lasts a few years… do you realise how much money a webspammer can make a day? A spammer only has to operate for a year before they can afford to retire.

Aposed to a spam hunter who makes no money and spends hours of their time each day on a lost cause.

Sorry for that.

Vasily

Matt Cutts:
spamhuntress.com/2005/10/23/googles-dirty-little-secret/#respond
spamhuntress.com/2006/01/15/thanks-for-the-compliments/#respond

Adam Lasnik:
spamhuntress.com/2006/07/26/the-danger-of-autoresponders/#respond

You can easily spot Google employees by one of the corporate proxies they use. Seems like you missed out on a few things

You claim that Spamhuntress has the habit of getting things wrong, but fail to deliver evidence. Can you please elaborate with examples and tell the readers what exactly the wrong part is? Are there any traces on the Internet that could prove your expertise?

Finally your proclamation of web spam to be the future: I guess that’s what “bulkers” had claimed several years ago until they found out that email spam had became increasingly ineffective. The parallels to today’s webspam community are obvious, so I’m afraid your future is already on a sharp decline :-).

Vasily