| Does Spamming Pay?
Before I go on, I should say that by clicking that fun logo to the left, you can join the Spam Fan Club, i.e., the Hormel Spam Spiced Ham Fan Club. I have no idea what the perks are to being in such a club. Anyway, I have a new, persistent comment spammer that has been annoying me. This person started out by at least attempting to respond to the content of my posts, and then seems to have just given up any pretense about being legit and started leaving this comment on a zillion posts: Good post mate, very informative. This person also left a lot of the comments on long ago posts, maybe hoping they wouldn't be noticed by me. They were noticed. So, if you see a comment that says "good post, mate" you can assume it's really no mate of mine. The question, though, is this: Is anyone winning at this spamming game? Are people getting rich from spamming blog comments? I've heard that some of those investing spammers have managed to rope some people in with their e-mails, but blog comment spam? It seems like so much work for so little promise of gain.
Strategies For Preventing Comment Spam
Bloggers are painfully aware of website owners who try to improve their websites rank by adding links to blogs. There are several strategies for combating this problem.
The first and most obvious method is to avoid free blogger sites. These are favorite targets for comment spam.
Bloggers who own their own software can add a no-follow tag. The rel=nofollow tag does not stop the spam, but it does stop robots from following the link. Blogger, owned by Google, implements these tags already. Wordpress has anti-comment spam plug-ins to help bloggers stop comment spam.
Do not bother banning the IP address - unplugging a computer for one hour can change the IP address, and changing a servers IP address is relatively easy. Some companies buy IP addresses in blocks of a hundred or more, and spammers also use open proxies.
Education IT Blog
Stanford researchers, who followed 480 female California college students for up to two years, report that the eight-week Internet-based program reduced the development of eating disorders in women at high risk. "This study shows that innovative intervention can work," said Thomas Insel, director of the National Insitute of Mental Health, which funded the study; its findings appeared in the August issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. Experts call the study "a very significant piece of research" that "gives every indication of being able to reduce important risk factors." Few programs "can hold a candle to these results." Through fliers posted at colleges in San Francisco and San Diego, the team recruited 480 women whose average age was nearly 21 and whose average body mass index (BMI) was 23.7 — in the normal range, equivalent to a 5-foot-4 woman who weighs 138 pounds.
The illusion of collusion is not fully understood until one ...
I'll take the pledge Martin. Honestly, I have been learning how to correctly identify to readers what is paid for things on my own blog. I call it a thing, simply put, for I have never had to reveal my sources of income before, as one does with blogging, save to my respective government come income tax time. I say honestly, I have never posted a post because I was paid from a company to post about it's product. Other than being a paid contributor to this blog and one other, I feel that being labelled as a contributor clearly illustrates that a financial and/or personal exchange is taking place, between owner and contributor. I believe this to be clearly understood by those who happen upon the blogosphere for the first time. It was to me. It may not be to others. But given time this concept/reality is digested quickly.
Back in service
The blog server has been suffering from comment spam attacks lately, leading to occasional outages, such as most of this morning. Unfortunately, even the comment spam defenses in the current version of Movable Type put a strain on the server. I'm exploring various ways to cope with this. Thanks for your patience. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 31, 2006 11:35 AM | Email This .
BT tackles spam
BT is doing its bit to tackle the growing problem of spam by launching an automated system that aims to combat professional spammers and alert infected users. The telco's spam busting system is based on Content Forensics technology from StreamShield Networks and, by scanning millions of emails daily, it can provide detailed broadband network reports which BT can then act on. Around 6.5 billion emails sent each day are considered spam and their transit takes up valuable bandwidth that could be used by businesses and consumers for other purposes. With the new system, BT hopes to tackle this problem and redress the balance by catching those who choose to spam professionally as well as botnet infected consumers who are unaware that their PCs are generating junk emails.
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