Spam+Paris Hilton+Google Groups

Sometimes, you just have to scratch your head and wonder. Today I am wondering at the human animal, as I am beginning to think (okay.. not really beginning) that there are some pretty strange specimens out there. Of course I am not referring to you, Dear Reader… but to other people.

Those of you who view this series via RSS feed are viewing a ‘stripped down’ version of the Tech–for Everyone website, and you do not see the Calendar and Top 10 Posts, and “Fave this” buttons, etc., that are in the side columns. And so you cannot see the button which shows how many spam comments have been blocked from this site: so here’s a screenshot of it.
I have been up and running since mid-June (200-odd days) and as you can see, over 5,000 people have tried to post advertising as a Comment under an article — roughly 25 a day. I have yet to see a duplicate, and most appear to be hand-written and manually entered.

I scan these filtered Comments before deleting them (to make sure there’s not a genuine, that’s been “false-positive’d”) and so I can tell you that some of these people are simply trying a cheap and easy way to get a link back to their website.. which is one method search engines use to “rank” websites. These look pretty much all the same; “Hi! You have done a great job with your website. Could you take a look at mine? http://www.goofyurl.com”.

By far-and-away the largest “type” of spam comment is a list of 20-30 website addresses,
“Hi. I find some sites.
http://www.fake-viagra.com
http://www.buycheapfakeviagra.com
http://www.viagra-cheap-buy.com
http://www.u-fakedrugs.com/viagra”
and so on, and etc. for several lines. Sometimes it’s porn, but usually it’s “erectile dysfunction” meds. Often, there’s a “.cn” in the URL– http://goodcheapviagra4you.cn.com — which means the site is based in China.

Right. I’m going to click on a URL (one of a list of 40 similar URL’s) some clown named “rl2345urg@mail.ru” (dot ru=Russia) sends me, so I can ‘score’ some counterfeit sex drug off of a ChiComm.

As I said, my website gets a dozen, or more, of these a day. Think about that— there’s a group of people making counterfeit Viagra and packaging it and are ready to mail it; there are people building all these websites; and there are people creating these lists of these websites, and cruising blog sites and pasting these lists into Comment boxes. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of people all working hard at nothing but trying to pull a scam.
Q: What do you do for a living?
A: I post spam comments on blogs.

These list have changed recently, as these scammers have taken advantage of the free pages offered by Google (and Yahoo,etc.) for members of what Google calls “Groups”… which is supposed to be a “community”-type arena where people with similar interests and tastes can get together and discuss their.. well, their interests and tastes. These spam lists look like,
“Hi. I find some sites.
http://groups.google.com/group/adult/adult3/nastypictures
http://groups.google.com/group/adult/adult-3/nastypictures/bigones.jpg
http://groups.google.com/group/adult/adult3/sicknastypictures
http://groups.google.com/group/adult/adultsonly/nastypictures/picture.jpg” and so on.
Clicking on these URL’s will infect your computer with malware.

And just when I thought my prayers had been answered, and Paris Hilton had finally vanished from the limelight of world media and public consciousness, I get three Comment spam lists of Google Groups pages promising JPEGs of her nude. Yippee.
Again, I ask you to consider the number of people devoted to this.. enterprise, and, I remind you, these comments are (almost) always automatically filtered and blocked… they never see the light of day.

Tip of the day: Do not — ever — click on anything that you see that looks like this. The only reason anyone could have for going through this much time and effort (spoiling the Internet in the process) is because it works. Occasionally. (I refer you to this prior article.)
If everyone would stop clicking links, spam would go away… and these clowns might have to get real jobs.
Look at the number change in the time it took to write this article. Makes you wonder…

Today’s free link: looking for an all-in-one digital media tool? Try JetAudio 7. From site: “Not only does it play various music and video files, it also has features such as CD burning, recording, and conversion to other file formats. You can create your own Internet broadcasts, and you can play all major file formats, including WAV, MP3, MP3Pro, OGG, WMA, MPEG, AVI, WMV, MIDI, RM, and video and audio CD tracks.”

Copyright © 2007-8 Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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