If you have a blog you probably have several comment posts to your articles every day from unethical people trying to post trackbacks to the blogs they own or for blogs with whom they have some type of link generation agreement. If you have an email account you undoubtedly get many unsolicited emails everyday trying to sell you software, jewelry, books, and no telling what else.
It used to be that the emails and blog comments I would get would be either obvious scams or totally unreputable companies. Not any more. Now I’m often getting the same type of trackbacks and unsolicited marketing emails touting well-known companies, tourist destinations, and even non-profit organizations.
Almost without exception these comment posts and emails have a false email address attached making it impossible to track down the sender.
There have been many who have predicted dire consequences for the internet if such behavior isn’t stopped. Unfortunately, it isn’t going to stop. Government agencies are impotent to stop it. The scam artists and those getting kickbacks from an affiliate marketing agreement certainly have no interest in stopping it. And those engaged in posting the comments and sending the emails believe they have nothing to fear—what real consequences do they face? Their name and their email address is false–the only thing in the comment that is real is the url of the site they are making money off of.
To some extent we have the joy of knowing that their emails are deleted without ever being looked at, as are their spam blog comments. They invest their time and effort simply to have us click one little button and their work goes straight to the trash.
Some have tried to get a little more sophisticated and actually post what appears to be a legit comment such as “I like your blog. I added your rss feed to my feed reader,” and they then add a link to their site. Somehow, they think the blog owner will be too stupid to recognize the purpose of and worthlessness of the comment.
For sometime, I’ve simply chalked these spam comments and emails up to the cost of doing business. But since they are now featuring some very legit companies who I doubt want to see their reputation tarnished, I’ve decided to make every Saturday’s post a list of the companies I will now avoid because of the spam their affiliate programs are generating. You might consider avoiding them also—especially if you’re getting spam due to their affiliate programs also.
This week’s list of companies (I’m obviously leaving out some of the more unsavory topics and companies):
Tag Heuer
CNN dot com
Xanga dot com
Old School Brands
Artcom dot com
Grab a Forum dot com
Marusyo Sangyo company
The Guysborough Journal
Border Collies dot co dot uk
Trotter Antiques dot com
Kelley’s Kookies dot com
Arkansas Department of Tourism
I certainly won’t be purchasing anything from these companies nor visiting their websites. Of course there were a whole slew of linkbacks to sites I can’t or won’t mention because of the subject matter.
Maybe if enough of us get fed up with this and start highlighting the companies whose sites are being promoted through spam we can put a damper on it anyway.
The first time I got one of those fake posts complimenting my blog I felt quite pround – I didn’t realise it had been generated by some blog-posting machine.
Then the next day I noticed an identical post by the same person on an obscure blog I post to related to the football team I support. The posting software must have had an algorithm which tracked down or searched for any blogs posted on by the author of the blog it had spammed – presumably assuming the posts would be to a similar themed blog.
I’ve found the sophisticated spam of this sort has died down since the “nofollow” tag has been introduced. Presumably it was being done to get backlinks rather than direct clicks.
Of course, the mindless spam pushing various pharmaceuticals and enhancement products still continues….
Ian
Comment by Ian Brodie — April 19, 2008 @ 3:04 pm |
Ian,
I haven’t noticed a slowdown at all. Although I’ve had my blog for almost two years, I’ve been on Word Press for about four months. During that time I’ve had over 1,200 spam posts of which my spam blocker has picked up over 860 of them. 1,200 spam in 120 days–about 10 a day is a little absurd.
As you say, the lottery scams, the enhancement and pharmaceutical spam, the jewelry, watches, and others will continue. But now they have graduated into pushing legitimate products and services by known companies. Some, such as the CNN spam are trying to highlight particular events or interviews. Still, pressure could be put on companies to change their programs to discourage instead of encourage spamming blogs and emails.
Are the spam posts for Kelley’s Kookies, The Arkansas Department of Tourism, or Trotter Antiques committed with the knowledge and aid of these organizations? I don’t know, of course, because the email addresses used are fake. But if they are, these folks are doing far more harm to themselves than they realize.
Paul
Comment by Paul McCord — April 19, 2008 @ 4:01 pm |
Sounds like you’re getting a lot more spam than me – maybe I’ve just been lucky with mine tailing off. Also, shifting my blog from a top level .com to a subdomain of my .co.uk site might have helped too (as does the fact I get less traffic than you!).
Have you tried something like the reCAPTCHA plugin to at least ensure the blog comment is being done manually? It’s fairly easy to install and get an API key etc.
Ian
Comment by Ian Brodie — April 20, 2008 @ 7:13 am |