Equation: How Much Money Do Spammers Rake In? | Magazine. Google's decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search. Jeff Atwood, in Trouble In the House of Google: People whose opinions I respect have all been echoing the same sentiment — Google, the once essential tool, is somehow losing its edge. The spammers, scrapers, and SEO’ed-to-the-hilt content farms are winning. (via Anil Dash’s nice roundup on the issue) I’ve been frustrated as well by Google’s apparent defeat by spam. It’s not a sudden issue — it’s been gradually worsening for a few years. When I ask Google for something, it’s usually from these types of queries: Address bar: Where is this specific page that I know exists but I don’t know its URL?
Over the years, the impact of spam — mostly affiliate marketing and auto-generated splogs — has decimated the usefulness of the “product research” category. But recently, spam has taken over the “guide” query results, and even many “reference” queries. In other words, it’s now nearly impossible to find good results for many commonly asked types of queries. “Hey, anyone know how to wire an outlet?” Ultimate Spam Email Archive. Facebook Expands Test of Spam Filter for Wall Posts to Pages. Facebook has added a spam filter to the walls of Pages. Appearing as a separate wall tab which is only visible to admins, the filter automatically removes posts to the Page’s wall which are likely to be spam. These include those that link to spammy websites and requests for users to Like, install, or send a friend request to a specific Page, app, or profile.
The feature has been in testing since September, but has now been rolled out to all Pages. A major problem for Pages is that in order to allow open discussion and increase engagement, admins have to allow those who Like the Page to post to its wall. However, this gives spammers the opportunity to damage the perception of a Page by filling it with malicious or profiteering links or objectionable content. This can cause users to Unlike the Page or stop engaging in conversation there. In a newly updated Help Center article about administering Pages, Facebook explains how it is combatting the problem:
Mailinator - Let Them Eat Spam! FTC Kills Porn/Spam ISP. Today, the Federal Trade Commission permanently shut down 3FN, a Belize-based Internet service provider (ISP) notorious for hosting botnets, child pornography, phishing attacks and various other scams and malware. The ISP has been ordered to pay back $1.08 million which it earned by cooperating and conspiring with criminals. It took almost a full year in court for the FTC to win this battle against 3FN. When this ISP was put under a preliminary injunction last year, spam volume dropped by 15%. 3FN had been actively recruiting spammers and others and whose senior staff had coached clients on building botnets.
In addition to aiding and abetting those who would infest our computers with viruses, spyware and other malware, the ISP also knowingly hosted illegal and disturbing types of pornography. Look Who’s Ranking Now: How Google Can’t Seem to Stop the Spammers. First, a full disclosure. I run a humor site, ZUG.com, which for several years had one of the coveted top ten organic positions for the keyword “Viagra,” entitled The Viagra Prank. As this piece brings a lot of traffic to our site, I follow the Viagra SERPS with great energy and endurance, like Viagra users themselves. Since we pride ourselves on following the two “golden rules of Google”—write good content, and promote that content ethically—I am always intrigued to see who stays on the first page of Google and who gets the, uh, shaft. (Sorry, I’m a comedy writer.) Lately I’ve seen a disturbing trend where blatantly black hat sites are finding their way into the Google Top 10 for “Viagra.”
Cloaking, redirects, false domains, spammy links—these guys are using every dirty trick in the book, and Google can’t seem to catch them. Let’s break down a few of the top ten sites that Google currently returns for the keyword “Viagra,” using SEOmoz.org’s Linkscape tool to view the backlinks of each. Home - Ensuring Inbox Delivery - CritSend. When an Anonymous Troll Commenter is Revealed. It all started with a supportive post titled “The Tycoon’s of Tomorrow“, one of a series of posts discussing young UK entrepreneurs, their stories and their ambitions for greatness. This specific post was about TechFluff TV’s Hermione Way who also happens to run a rather successful video production company called Newspepper.
All good and well, that is, until the comments. Now if you’ve spent more than ten minutes of any blog, YouTube video or in fact any site that permits anonymous commenting, you will have noticed some of the filth that many commenters come out with. Often it’s completely incomprehensible, other times it’s pure vile and frankly a test of human will not reply to. In this case however, one persons comment stood out, not because he left his name – no he chickened out of that one – but because the attack on Way (and others) was personal, very personal. Rather than respond, Hermione begun what turned out to be a relatively short mission to reveal who he was. Image Credit. Xobni - Outlook Plugin to Search People, Email, and Attachments Instantly.
TwitBlock - ridding the Twitterverse of spam.