Spammers And Spam Hunters

Sometimes I don’t know which people are the worst. Those that spam or those that say they are going after spammers.

I deleted 145 spam posts on one of my blogs today. Fortunately I have moderate comments turned on so they never actually get posted. That makes the spammers bad, but that’s the worst inconvenience spammers have caused me.

However those that supposedly are our Spam saviors. Those that say they are fighting spam have caused me more problems than the spammers themselves.

Sorbs.net lists your domain name as a spam domain name if you happen to be hosted on or near the same IP address as the spammers. Therefore you are guilty by association.

To get your domain name removed off of sorbs.net’s list, you have to give them money. Sounds a lot like extortion since they manually add you to the list then ask you for money to be removed.

Then of course they tell you that they give the money to charity. I checked out the charity they say they give the money to. It goes to a legal defense fund they could use to defend themselves if you sued them. Some charity.

Twice now blogger.com has caused me spamconvenience. They have locked me out of one of my own blogs and one I manage for a client because their spambot said it might be spam. It also says that if you are a human reading this message then of course I am not likely a spambot and they will correct the situation.

They did this even though on that blog they require me to type into the little box whatever crazy letters they have in the little graphic to make each post on that same blog.

Half the time the little picture isn’t even there. So you cannot type the little letters into the box because the little letters don’t exist. So how can they use that method to make sure I am not spamming, then flag it as a spam blog?

However since I get paid to blog daily on the client’s blog, my loss of income, that I am sure Google will not reimburse me for, is just that lost income due to the spam fighters.

They did this today to the client’s blog. They are reviewing it they say. Like to see that blog? Go to http://hotelsandapartments.blogspot.com It’s not spam.

The first time it happened was one day after I created the blog. It had exactly one post in it. Wow, what a spammer I am. They blocked me from logging in but sent me a very nice email, which I had not opted in for, saying they would be glad to review that blog too. They even provided a nice link to where I could fill out a form to request a review.

When I followed their nice link in the unsolicited email, (not spam), they sent me, it asked me to log in using the username and password that THEY HAD ALREADY BLOCKED ME FROM USING!

So that blog had to be rebuilt elsewhere. Again, I have had way more trouble from spam fighters than I ever have had from spammers. Well, that’s all for my rant. Now I have to see if I can get the little picture below to load so I can see what stupid letters I have to type into the box so you can see this post.

An Introduction To Spam Filters

Using spam filters is another very effective way of combating spam or junk mail. These programs use some keywords like ‘guaranteed’, ‘free’, etc and block any email with those words in them. But this has the disadvantage of sometimes blocking even important mails from your contacts and preventing those senders from sending mails to your address again. The way out is to use add-on spam filters which allow you to control the content that should be allowed into your inbox. This will save you a lot of time and energy as you no longer will have go through each and every email before identifying it as spam and eliminating it.

Spam filters can be installed on any computer system and aim at filtering junk and getting only relevant information to the user.

Setting up a simple spam filter can be very easy. Identify the section ‘filters’ in your email program and create a new filter. Lay down the rules or filter conditions for the new folder. These can be the parameters under which an email would be marked as spam and deleted from your inbox. If you prefer to look at the filtered mail before deleting it, you can choose the option to move it to another folder once it is filtered. Once you save the changes you have made in the new filter, it will be active.

You have a new variety of spam filters in the market now which are called ‘smarter filters’. While these fight and prevent spam very effectively, setting it up is a very complex process and is recommended only for technical experts.

New generation spam filters are different from traditional ones in that they go in for statistical data rather features of spam. These filters decide on spam by analyzing the entire email and comparing it with other already identified spam mails. The error margin for these filters is almost zero as more than 99% of scams are identified and eliminated through this method.

Computers and Consumers – Understanding & Avoid Identity Theft

Computers and Consumers – Understanding & Avoid Identity Theft

The Internet has given over a billion people, worldwide, a way to instantly find information. The number of threats to a consumer’s security increases as the consumer connects with more computers, companies, and people online. The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), the nation’s consumer protection agency, says that all Internet users should understand the importance of online security and should take measures to protect themselves.

Why the Need for Security & How to Protect Yourself

The Computer: Part of a computers sophistication lies in its ability to connect with other computers over the Internet in order to bring you information. When it is connected with other computers, it opens itself up for the transmission of information, which can create vulnerability for the computer. Hackers can connect to the computer, scan it for open ports, and gain access to unauthorized information about the computer user.

Most computers have an Intrusion Detection System (“IDS”) that monitors the computer for suspicious activity. When suspicious activity is detected, the IDS sends an alert that an intrusion has occurred.

An IDS alone will not protect your computer from incoming hackers and viruses. Computer users also need to protect themselves with firewalls, which create a barrier between hackers and the computer and help to prevent access to unauthorized information.

The Computer User: The computer user can also accidentally open doors that will lead to a security breach, such as when the user is using the Internet to make purchases. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. e-commerce sales for the year 2007 were $136.4 billion. Although the Internet has made shopping a whole lot easier, it has also increased the number of instances of identity theft. A study conducted by the US Department of Justice reports that 6.4 million households experienced some kind of identity theft in 2005. Consumers also open themselves up to increased junk e-mail called SPAM when shopping online. Thankfully, there are ways to minimize your risk when shopping online.

Be careful where you post your personal email address. Consumers using the Internet increase their chances of receiving SPAM e-mail each time they provide their e-mail address to make a purchase. As mentioned earlier, hackers can access consumer information by scanning ports that are not secure. Consumers can help protect themselves by only providing information that is necessary when making the purchase. There are companies designed to help protect consumers from e-commerce identity theft and SPAM.

When providing payment information, consumers should always make sure the site is secure. An easy way to determine whether a site is secure is to look at the web address bar at the top of the screen. The http, which precedes the address, should change to https when checking out on a shopping site. The ‘s’ indicates that the consumer is shopping from a secure page.

Finally, a consumer should avoid using ATM/debit cards to make purchases, as the breach of this information could lead to unauthorized access of the consumer’s bank account information. Use a credit card instead. Most credit card companies will work on behalf of their client, should a hacker steal their credit card information. In many cases, the consumer will only be responsible for $50 of the transactions.

When a consumer shops wisely on the Internet and acts in conjunction with private Internet security sites and the FTC they will decrease the chances of being one of the six million households affected by identity theft.

The Threat of Spam and Basic Preventative Measures

Everyone who uses the internet has more than likely been targets of spam at one time or another. At first they are easy to dismiss for internet experienced persons, however for the inexperienced user of the internet, the messages contained can sometimes be intimidating and in some instances lead to trouble (I will come onto a personal example later).

Spam can take several forms; email and search engine spam are just two, but the one we will concentrate on in this article, and also the one you will, and have most likely encountered, is via email.

Spam is defined as unsolicited bulk mail, much of which is caught in your “bulk” or “trash” folder found in your email service provider control panel. You have probably often seen a mass of these types of emails in you bulk folders when checking for email that you actually have consented to receive, as many emails are caught by spam filters even though they should not. The majority of spam you may receive will be of a sexual or gambling nature, however over the past few months I have noticed an ever-increasing number of scam emails asking for sensitive information, claiming to be someone they are not.

Paypal and eBay scams are a prime example of these types of emails known as “phishing scam emails”. The email will be along the lines of:

“We have noticed an irregularity in your account details and require you to update them immediately. Failure to do so will result in the permanent closure of your account”

You can see how these emails can be pretty alarming to an inexperienced internet user who may only occasionally use the internet to sell or buy items on eBay for example. Some of the emails will look very convincing, and will use the images and symbols of the respective company, however be very cautious and take heed to the following important point:

If you are unsure of the legitimacy of the email, do not follow any link contained within the email to an external website. Instead, type the website address that you know is correct into your browser directly, so that you are safe in the knowledge that you are not using a fraudulent website.

Failure to do this may result in your account being hijacked by the scammer; it’s as easy as this. You follow the link in the email to a website claiming to be, and also looking very much like one where you have an account. The website will ask you to input your username and password to access your account and voila, you will have now sent this information to the scammer, allowing them access to your account containing sensitive information about you.

Another type of email scam that has been very popular is where you are notified to be the very lucky winner of a lottery, even though you have never entered the lottery in the location claiming your success! This is where the example of a personal experience comes in. Many people reading this will be thinking “I’ll never fall for one of these scams”, however the unfortunate reality is that many people will do so. An elderly relative of mine received one of these lottery scams from Spain, and then insisted on following up with the email scam, even though they had never even entered the lottery draw. The only stumbling block was that the bank account details required, needed to be sent by fax, which she couldn’t do, and despite the frustration that this caused I of course refused to help send it.

There are measures that you can take to help avoid being targeted by spammers; a few have been mentioned here. However, in addition never reply to a scam email as it will notify them that the email address is live and also that you have read the email, leading to further spam.

Of course there are many other threats from spam that are not discussed here, such as viruses and trojans being sent via email attachments. More details on spam can be found here: www.spam-blocker-online.com.

If You Do Research On The Web You Really Need An Internet Spam Filter

Spam has got to be one of the most annoying things on the Internet today. I remember when pop-ups first came on the scene, every website I went to was inundated with tons of pop-ups, I hated them, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone. Spam flooded the Internet with so many copies of the same messages, it’s a very shameful attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising of get-rich-quick schemes, or products for younger looking skin.

There are basically two types of spam and they affect Internet users differently. Cancelable Usenet spam is a single message sent to many Usenet spam is aimed at people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away. Usenet spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups by overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant posts. Email spam is another type of spam that targets individual users with direct mail messages. Email spam lists are usually created by scanning Usenet postings and stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching for Web addresses. What ever IT is, it’s not wanted and thank goodness there are plenty of websites were they will allow you to download free spam blockers.

Internet spam filters are a good way to block those pesky spam pop-ups, in fact, without them, there really is no way to get from website to website without Internet spam filters today. Even with spam filters, some pop-up can still get through. However, most Internet spam filters can recognize more than 98% of all incoming spam. There are Plugins that can be installed on your computer that will increase your Internet spam filters to the program.

A Spamihilator does just what it says, it annihilates spam and e-mail spam. Most are freeware applications that works in conjunction with other Internet spam filters and some will send you a daily report by e-mail if you want that will tell you how much spam you receive during that day while you were online. This way, you can restore false-positives or add the senders to your friends or block them completely. You can create your own language file by editing an XML file.

There are many good Internet spam filters you can trust to download on your computer today. It is a Federal offense for anyone who knowingly, with the intent to carry on any activity which would be a Federal or State crime of fraud or identity theft. Also in one “creates or procures the creation of a website or domain name that represents itself as a legitimate online business, without the authority or approval of the registered owner of the actual website or domain name of the legitimate online business and uses that website or domain name shall be fined under this title or imprisoned up to five years or both.

How To Know If It Is A Link Farm Spam Page

A link farm is a network of sites that link to other sites for the sole purpose of increasing link popularity. This is when a website gets hundreds of links to unrelated sites in exchange for reciprocal links. This is termed as spamming and any website who relates to link farms is penalized by removal from a search engine’s index.

Backgrounder on Link Farms

Link farms were originally developed by search engine optimizers to take advantage of the Inktomi search engine’s dependence on link popularity. It was targeted for manipulation with the use of link farms because of the fact that it was used by a number of independent but popular search engines. The most popular search engines during that time – Yahoo! also used Inktomi results as a supplement to its own directory search feature. Link farms facilitated the stabilization of listings for online business websites having few natural links from more stable sites.

Link popularity is used by most search engines to come up with a ranking order for search results. However, at the time link farms came to be, the Inktomi engine was maintaining two indexes. The primary index produced search results that are limited to about 100,000,000 listings thus pages with few inbound links fell out of the index on a regular basis. While the handling of link farm exchange was informal at the start, several service companies were eventually founded to handle automated registration, categorization and link page updates to member websites.

The coming of the Google search engine paved the way for the use of a link weighting scheme called PageRank. The PageRank algorithm assigns more weight to links that it determines as more valuable than others. Link farming was used to help member pages to increase their PageRank. This soon became the subject of manipulation by unscrupulous webmasters who continue to receive inbound linkage but found ways to hide outbound links if not totally avoid posting any link at all to their sites. There came a need for link farm managers to implement quality controls and require member compliance to rules that were installed to ensure fairness.

As a result, alternative link farm products emerged such as the link-finding software that identifies potential reciprocal link partners. This made possible the sending of template-based e-mails that offered link exchanges. Directory-like link pages were created for those websites intent on building link popularity as well as PageRank. The link farm movement was actively countered by search engines as they sought to identify specific attributes associated with link farms thus filtering those pages from indexing and search results. There were instances where entire domains had to be removed to prevent the potential influences of link farms on search results.

Link farm-influenced crawling diminished as search engines increased their capacity to index more sites. It became unnecessary for link farms to help sites retain their positions in primary indexes. However, it remained a popular tool to increase PageRank or perceived equivalent values. The Inktomi technology has since become a part of Yahoo! while the term “Link Farm” is now widely considered as derogatory.

There is still an ongoing debate as to the value of using PageRank in determining search results ranking. Reputable search engines are one in recommending that webmasters request for relevant links to their sites instead of participating in link farms. Sites that participate in link farms run the risk of having their search rankings penalized.

Link Farm Spam Page or Not?

Link farms usually refer to sites with an almost boundless list of links to other websites rather than links from page to page within a site. Relevancy to a site is not a major consideration in determining the links as the major purpose of linking is to get a high ranking among search engines. The provisions of good information to users cease to be the goal of these websites as they concentrate on attaining search popularity through the sheer number of links.

When is a specific website said to be participating in a link farm? The current indication seems to be pointing at having not more than 100 links on a page as a safe measure. There are apprehensions of whether having numerous internal links will be interpreted as a link farm.

A link farm is composed of a group of web pages that hyperlink to every other web page in the group. It can be manually created but is most often created through automated programs and services. It is sometimes called spamdexing as it is a form of spamming the index of a search engine. A term that is often associated with it is the “spaghetti code” which is a code with a complex and tangled control structure that uses unstructured branching constructs.

The algorithmic principle that puts emphasis on the voting power of “authority sites” lies behind the manipulated processes of link farms. There is that assumption that related pages link to each other and authoritative pages tend to link to other authoritative pages. Conversely, being linked to spam sites or sites that use Black-Hat SEO degrades the reputation of any site. Association with poorly reputed sites affects a site’s search engine positioning as it stands to be categorized as an irrelevant site.

As spammers continue to go around the valid purpose of linking, the value of reciprocal linking continue to decrease. Too many irrelevant links provide no value and can be seen as spam by human experts and search engines. A link directory with no clear, organized and distinct categories of links can be interpreted as a link farm especially if there are already more than 50 links on a page.

TrustRank is used to counter the various techniques employed to achieve higher rankings than actually deserved in a search engine’s result. It uses a technique that manually identifies reputable seed pages and uses their link structure to discover other pages that are likely to be good as well. It aims to cut down on spam and deliver the real content that is desired by the searcher.

There are a number of ways to ensure that a website’s link directory does not end up being categorized as another form of a link farm. Incorporating a link directory into a website has its own advantages but caution should be taken so as not to have too many outbound links on a page that dilutes its value. If a website’s links are very much varied and tend to be unrelated, they will need to be categorized to become relevant to each other.

The use of clear, concise titles and descriptions for categories will help searchers (humans and search engines’ spiders alike) understand what a particular category is all about so that the measure of relevancy can out rightly be determined. It is not a requirement to agree to all link exchange requests especially if the requesting site cannot be considered a good representation of a site’s theme and values. It is highly recommended that regular follow-up on approved link exchanges is done to determine the status of the links and determine whether continued linkage with them is still acceptable. It is possible that although some links present themselves initially as good links have been banned, gone under, or moved. These are situations beyond anyone’s control so it is best for a website to work hard on keeping its links and contents relevant so as to bring continuous qualified traffic to itself. Link farms may be considered obsolete in a sense but it continuous to pop-up in different forms at present.

Which Link Checkers Do You Use?

1. Norton Safe Web.
2. ScanURL.
3. PhishTank.
4. Google Transparency Report.
5. VirusTotal.
6. PSafe dfndr lab.
7. URLVoid.
8. SiteCheck.

Google’s Tag To Remove Content Spamming

Content spamming, in its simplest form, is the taking of content from other sites that rank well on the search engines, and then either using it as-it-is or using a utility software like Articlebot to scramble the content to the point that it can’t be detected with plagiarism software. In either case, your good, search-engine-friendly content is stolen and used, often as part of a doorway page, to draw the attention of the search engines away from you.

Everyone has seen examples of this: the page that looks promising but contains lists of terms (like term – term paper – term papers – term limits) that link to other similar lists, each carrying Google advertising. Or the site that contains nothing but content licensed from Wikipedia. Or the site that plays well in a search but contains nothing more than SEO gibberish, often ripped off from the site of an expert and minced into word slaw.

These sites are created en masse to provide a fertile ground to draw eyeballs. It seems a waste of time when you receive a penny a view for even the best-paying ads – but when you put up five hundred sites at a time, and you’ve figured out how to get all of them to show up on the first page or two of a lucrative Google search term, it can be surprisingly profitable.

The losers are the people who click on these pages, thinking that there is content of worth on these sites – and you. Your places are stolen from the top ten by these spammers. Google is working hard to lock them out, but there is more that you can do to help Google.

Using The Antispam Tag

But there is another loser. One of the strengths of the Internet is that it allows for two-way public communication on a scale never seen before. You post a blog, or set up a wiki; your audience comments on your blog, or adds and changes your wiki.

The problem? While you have complete control over a website and its contents in the normal way of things, sites that allow for user communication remove this complete control from you and give it to your readers. There is no way to prevent readers of an open blog from posting unwanted links, except for manually removing them. Even then, links can be hidden in commas or periods, making it nearly impossible to catch everything.

This leaves you open to the accusation of link spam – for links you never put out there to begin with. And while you may police the most recent several blogs you’ve posted, no one polices the ones from several years ago. Yet Google still looks at them and indexes them. By 2002, bloggers everywhere were begging Google for an ignore tag of some sort to prevent its spiders from indexing comment areas.

Not only, they said, would bloggers be grateful; everyone with two-way uncontrolled communication – wikis, forums, guest books – needed this service from Google. Each of these types of sites has been inundated with spam at some point, forcing some to shut down completely. And Google itself needed it to help prevent the rampant spam in the industry.

In 2005, Google finally responded to these concerns. Though their solution is not everything the online community wanted (for instance, it leads to potentially good content being ignored as well as spam), it does at least allow you to section out the parts of your blog that are public. It is the “nofollow” attribute.

“Nofollow” allows you to mark a portion of your web page, whether you’re running a blog or you want to section out paid advertising, as an area that Google spiders should ignore. The great thing about it is that not only does it keep your rankings from suffering from spam, it also discourages spammers from wasting your valuable comments section with their junk text.

The most basic part of this attribute involves embedding it into a hyperlink as . This allows you to manually flag links, such as those embedded in paid advertising, as links Google spiders should ignore. But what if the content is user-generated? It’s still a problem because you certainly don’t have time to go through and mark all those links up.

Fortunately, blogging systems have been sensitive to this new development. Whether you use WordPress or another blogging system, most have implemented either automated “nofollow” links in their comment sections, or have issued plugins you can implement yourself to prevent this sort of spamming.

This does not solve every problem. But it’s a great start. Be certain you know how your user-generated content system provides this service to you. In most cases, a software update will implement this change for you.

Is This Spamming And Will Google Block Me?

There’s another problem with the spamming crowd. When you’re fighting search engine spam and start seeing the different forms it can take – and, disturbingly, realizing that some of your techniques for your legitimate site are similar – you have to wonder: Will Google block me for my search engine optimization techniques?

This happened recently to BMW’s corporate site. Their webmaster, dissatisfied with the dealership’s position when web users searched for several terms (such as “new car”), created and posted a gateway page – a page optimized with text that then redirects searchers to an often graphics-heavy page.

Google found it and, rightly or wrongly, promptly dropped their page rank manually to zero. For weeks, searches for their site turned up plenty of spam and dozens of news stories – but to find their actual site, it was necessary to drop to the bottom of the search, not easy to do in Googleworld.

This is why you really need to understand what Google counts as search engine spam, and adhere to their restrictions even if everyone else doesn’t. Never create a gateway page, particularly one with spammish data. Instead, use legitimate techniques like image alternate text and actual text in your page. Look for ways to get other pages to point to your site – article submission, for instance, or directory submission. And keep your content fresh, always.

While duplicated text is often a sign of serious spammage, the Google engineers realize two things: first, the original text is probably still out there somewhere, and it’s unfair to drop that person’s rankings along with those who stole it from them; and second, certain types of duplicated text, like articles or blog entries, are to be expected.

Their answer to the first issue is to credit the site first catalogued with a particular text as the creator, and to drop sites obviously spammed from that one down a rank. The other issue is addressed by looking at other data around the questionable data; if the entire site appears to be spammed, it, too, is dropped. Provided you are not duplicating text on many websites to fraudulently increase your ranking, you’re safe. Ask yourself: are you using the same content on several sites registered to you in order to maximize your chances of being read? If the answer is yes, this is a bad idea and will be classified as spamdexing. If your content would not be useful to the average Internet surfer, it is also likely to be classed as spamdexing.

There is a very thin line between search engine optimization and spamdexing. You should become very familiar with it. Start with understanding hidden/invisible text, keyword stuffing, metatag stuffing, gateway pages, and scraper sites.

Free Spam Blockers for wordpress website

Remember when spam was just another horrible thing you would never eat? And then you grew up a little and spam became the lyrics to a great Monty Python song. And now spam is something to avoid at all costs. Or, in the case of free spam blockers, at no cost at all. Everything is better when it’s free, right? Such is the case with blocking out annoying spam from your email account, too.

Free spam blockers are popping up all over the internet. Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that some pop-up ads are advertising spam blocking technology. The problem with spam isn’t really the content, of course, it’s the time spent winnowing through all those e-mails in search of the ones that really contain useful information or are from people with whom you want to contact. The best free spam blockers in the world are not only free, but don’t take up any space on your computer. Yes, I’m talking about being very careful to whom you give your e-mail address.

The plain simple truth is that any time you fill out a form that asks for your e-mail address, you are just asking for spam. Maybe the site where you filled out the form sold your address to mass marketers and maybe they didn’t, but chances are if you have ever given your e-mail address to a company rather than an individual, you received spam because of it. And if you’re like most people doing business on the internet, you’re spending anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour and a half just checking your e-mail every day. You don’t have time to wade through the spam pool. That’s why getting yourself one of the reliable free spam blockers out there is so important.

You can almost instantly tell when you’ve come across one of these free spam blockers because of their oh-so-clever name. For instance, Spamhilator, SpamButcher, or SpamKiller. And you want to know a secret? They are almost all exactly alike. Oh sure, there are little differences that may mean a lot to you personally, but frankly it doesn’t matter. The best thing you can do is download them as a trial version—and with so many on the market offering trial versions, it makes no sense to ever download any of the free spam blockers that don’t offer trial versions—and check them out to make sure they do what they promise. And if they do what they promise, do they do it with a minimum amount of fuss and muss and maintenance on you part.

The key to using free spam blockers is maintenance. You got one in the first place to give yourself more time to do what you need to do. So why would you want to use a spam blocker is high maintenance itself? Go through all the free spam blockers that interest you and then narrow them down until you find the one that works completely in the background without throwing out stuff you really need and that doesn’t require you to keep checking up on it. That’s the one you want.

Best Anti-Spam WordPress Plugins

• Spam Protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk.
• Akismet Spam Protection.
• WP Cerber Security, Anti-Spam & Malware Scan.
• Titan Anti-spam & Security.
• Stop Spammers.
• Antispam Bee.
• WordPress Zero Spam.
• WP Armour.