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I don’t understand this odd form of spam
By Steve Outing on Feb 19, 2007 in Misc.
As a web publisher, you come to expect spam. My company’s websites are constantly bombarded by comment spam — but fortunately our spam filter catches most of it, and it’s the rare one that we have to delete to get it out of public view.
In just the last few days, we’ve started to get hit with a new form of spam. And this one I just don’t understand why the spammers are doing it, and what they get out of it.
All of a sudden I start to get “Copyright violation” e-mails in my inbox. These are generated and sent to me when someone on one of our sites has clicked the “Report misconduct” link, to alert us to when someone has posted something bad so we can check it out. The messages — I’ve gotten dozens in the last couple days — compliment us on our sites. (“A fantastic site, and brilliant effort. A great piece of work.”) Each message is a bit different, and links to some oddball website.
Now, I’m the only person who sees these; they are not published anywhere on the site. So what is this spammer’s motivation? What is the spammer gaining from sending me a bunch of faux complimentary messages?
On Feb 19, 2007, Subir Ghosh said:
Spammers, we all agree, are scums of the earth. And it takes only one pervert to understand another. I think we can never know what makes them think and act the way they do. The only thing, I believe, they have in mind is: keep at it.
On Feb 19, 2007, Subir Ghosh
said:
Spammers, we all agree, are scums of the earth. And it takes only one pervert to understand another. I think we can never know what makes them think and act the way they do. The only thing, I believe, they have in mind is: keep at it.
On Feb 20, 2007, Ian Douglas said:
We get something equally baffling at telegraph.co.uk. It's a string of nonsense words, sometimes with a link that doesn't go anywhere and, even weirder, sometimes with no link at all.
On Feb 20, 2007, Ian Douglas
said:
We get something equally baffling at telegraph.co.uk. It’s a string of nonsense words, sometimes with a link that doesn’t go anywhere and, even weirder, sometimes with no link at all.
On Feb 20, 2007, Ryan
said:
We see tons of this – it’s just coming from scripts directed at any mailto: link on the Web.
On Feb 20, 2007, Ryan said:
We see tons of this – it's just coming from scripts directed at any mailto: link on the Web.
On Feb 20, 2007, Derek
said:
They’re guessing & hoping that the form is a comment form. Spam bots inject links into any form they can find, hoping to artificially boost backlinks in Google.
On Feb 20, 2007, Derek said:
They're guessing & hoping that the form is a comment form. Spam bots inject links into any form they can find, hoping to artificially boost backlinks in Google.
On Aug 17, 2007, Howard Owens said:
I trust FB more to get a message through spam filters and get a person\'s attention (say, yours) better than a straight e-mail.
But you raise a valid issue about archives.
Speaking of archives … online-news?
On Aug 17, 2007, Steve said:
Good point, Howard! My e-mail in-flow is too much for me to keep up with, so I do sometimes miss stuff. But if someone contacts me via Facebook, I\'ll see it. … But that\'s for now, when incoming messages on FB aren\'t that frequent yet.