Explanation of terms

From Spamhuntress

Explanation of Terms

For types of spam see Spam types.

Terms

• blog - Web logs.
• domain - The text address of a website such as google.com or spamhuntress.com, see DNS.
• DNS - Domain Name System. The internet is made up of IP numbers, and domain names, such as google.com, is sitting on top of that system. DNS (or name servers) translate between domain names and IP numbers
• IP addresses. A dotted quad. Numbers with three dots separating four groups of up to three digits. Each group goes up to 255. This is what the internet is actually made up of. When you surf a website, your computer leaves an IP address in the logs of that website.
• listwashing - Removing users who complain from spam lists. Done by e-mail spammers as well as webspammers. Also done by hosts who want to keep the spamming clients. They blackhole the complainer's webserver from receiving traffic from their client's servers.
• MX records - Part of name server system. A lookup to see where to send e-mail for a domain. It might be different from the website IP.
• referrer - Browsers tell servers where a visitor came from when following a link.
• SEO - Search Engine Optimization, see SEO.
• spam - Unwanted disruptive communication (usually commercial), see Spam types.
• spam poisoning - spamming links to innocent authority sites or third party sites to make automatic spam filtering systems unreliable. Also used by spammy sites - they link to authority sites to mimic real sites making it harder for search engines to determine the uslessnes of the site.
• spider trap - An automagically-generated web page which contains large numbers of fake email addresses and hyperlinks to further, randomly-filled pages of more of the same. Which ought to completely snarl up SpamBots. See C2: spider trap.
• tar pit - see teergrube
• teergrube - literally, "tar pit". A modified MTA (mail transport agent) designed to slow down spammers. When a suspected spammer tries to send one piece of email, the teergrube holds the line open and talks v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y so it may take 2 hours for that piece of email to finish. The email still gets through, so communication is still possible. However, it is impossible to send millions of unsolicited bulk emails per day to a teergrube. See the Teergrubing FAQ.
• trackback - A method by which a site can notify another site's article (through a "ping") that it has been linked to allow for contextual linking.
• whois - domain registration lookups providing contact info for the owner of the domain.
• wiki - Community edited website usually open to editing by anyone which makes them a target for spammers.