Open Hunting Season On Blog Spammers
November 29, 2007
For those who have been paying attention, you may have noticed when reading some of the articles here, especially if you get into any of the comments sections, that you’ll see this absolute nonsense from those who feel compelled to do everything in their power to scam Google and achieve success by lying, cheating and stealing on the Internet.
What you will see is something called “pingbacks” or “trackbacks”. You’ll probably also read some foolishness that says, “Tom Remington has written a great article or while searching the Internet, I stumbled upon…..” This my friends is ridiculous. These are con artists trying to make a fast buck. They have learned how to set up a blog and do nothing. It is automated so it visits other blogs, like the Black Bear Blog, and steals content.
The real stupid idiots steal the entire articles while the slimy and slick ones steal a “teaser” and provide a link back to my article - like somehow that makes it ok.
The problem with this is simple really. When they do this, they set up their blogs, and sometimes they make several hundred of them, this way in order to place ads, especially Google ads, on them. Another problem is they are just taking up space in cyberspace and cluttering the Internet with useless stuff. Also, Google now has to find a way to counter this activity because it is ruining the Internet experience.
The other problem with this more from my perspective is that I want to allow other honest bloggers the opportunity to do pingbacks and trackbacks. This is for the reader more than anything. You see Google believes and I concur, that the Internet experience should be geared to provide users with a good experience. When a user lands some place during a search, they should be able to find relevant information - this is what trackbacks are for.
When idiots are out there doing this, it also fills up my mailbox and fills up comment boxes on the page where the article is. When a reader finishes an article, they may want to also check out comments. Who wants to sort through that pile of garbage?
Another problem, which I’m sure some of you have already encountered, is that if you have been participating in some dialog on a particular story, the software is set up, usually by your choosing, to receive an email notice if anyone else replies to comments on this particular story. Who wants to have their mailbox fill up with email notices from some lame, stupid, lazy jerk who has no life?
So, here’s my request to all readers. If you know someone who does this sort of thing, shoot them for all of us, please!
Tom Remington
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Tom,
We encountered something like this a few months back. The person in question was lifting content from the GSI blog, from Othmar’s blog and from others. My IT guys tracked down the company that was hosting the blog, we contacted them, and the blog was shut down.
Most hosting companies have policies against these types of blogs. It does take a bit of effort, but you can generally get the blogs shut down. Of course, if you shut one down, they just pop up in another place, but I think it is still worth the effort to lay the smackdown on them when you find them.
Tom,
Pingbacks and trackbacks are tough to protect against spam because of the way they are set up. There is a really good anti-spam plugin available for Wordpress at Rice University’s website here.
Basically it validates that the splog contains a link back to your site on the post. If it doesn’t it denies the trackback.
HTH,
Jon
Thanks, Jon and Kristine!
I think a lot of us bloggers have experienced this, especially recently. The person who was guilty of using my content was actually the same person that Kristine is talking about, and when her IT guys tracked em down my problem disappeared.
I hate that there is always some pinhead who uses his smart brain for crap such as this. Drives me nuts!
Yeah, what is with the number of spam pingbacks, etc. recently
These spammers are also aware of the time of year this is. Since Black Friday, and especially Cyber-Monday they ramp up their pings in a coordinated effort to rake in some doe and capitalize on the millions of consumers worldwide who will be shopping and spending lots of time online.
So what can we do about it?
Collectively? Independently?
Besides, of course, Tom’s rhetorical “shoot them” solution…
Rhetorical?????BwahahahBwahahaha! Well, there’s one thing for sure. I’m not going to spend my valuable time trying to chase down some idiots IP number to see who it belongs to etc.
When it reaches the point of out of control, I will reluctantly close out trackbacks, pingbacks and eventually comments.
Thanks Tom! My site is infested with this stuff! Every time I make a post, I get 2-6 of these, almost instantly.
Do you just delete them? What can we do?
Marshall, I just ignore em. Do whatever you want. I’m not sure it matters that much one way or another. My biggest concern is that my readers get mad because their mailbox is filling up with this when they weigh in on a discussion and when this happens they get an email.
I value my readers comments and participation and I hate that someday that would end. Perhaps technology will catch up with it all someday.
Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere I stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt For those who have been paying attention, you may have noticed when reading some of the articles here, especially if you get into any of the comments sections, that you’ll see this absolute nonsense from those who feel compelled to do everything in their power to scam Google and achieve success by lying, cheating and stealing on the Internet. HAHA
Don’t forget to check out Moosedroppings.net and MoosesWildAmerica.com 
I couldn’t resist It bugs the crap out of me and I’m sure it is a good reason that readership on our blogs doesn’t really increase much.
-Moose-
Good one Moose! Good one.