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Spam Blogs #2

Blogs falsely identified as spam are a real problem in the Blogger world.

But genuine spam is a worse problem. The Register has two articles on this issue, Porno blog spam turns nasty and Google bug blocks thousands of sites.

If you've been seeing your visit counts drop recently, as I have, now you know why. Also, when you search your blog, and get an error "...entry cannot not be found...", you may be seeing a side effect of this problem.

The thing is, the effects of spam blogs, aka splogs, are hurting us in several ways.

  • Some of us have legitimate blogs, that are being incorrectly identified as splogs. In some cases, the blogs are deleted or disabled. We have to waste time getting Blogger to restore or re enable them. This wastes our time, and Blogger Support's time. Real, urgent, problems aren't being dealt with, because Blogger Support is busy dealing with splogs.
  • Blogger infrastructure is being overloaded, by the spammers creating and linking thousands of splogs. We are seeing hardware failures, caused by their volume. I have had to change my Blogger server, from miscellaneous hangups, 3 times in the last week. This is an increase of maybe 600% for me.
  • The search engines, like Google, are being overloaded by the splogs. The splog volume makes search engines work harder to index, and to retrieve, lists including the splogs.
  • The search engine hit lists are being overloaded by splogs producing hits. Our blogs can't be seen in the search hits lists, because of all of the splogs in there.
  • Maybe even Corrupted Blogs, caused by over redundant or badly coded hijacking processes.


I created a profile in an online forum somewhere yesterday. One item in the profile was labeled "interests". This is what I put in there:
I would like to see every spammer in the world shot to death. Then charge them for the bullets!

I wrote that before I read some of the articles linked thru the two above. Now I would add "... and charge their survivors double!".

I am very suspicious that yesterday's Google - Blogger Help Forum problem was splog related. And I know that some of the decrease in visits to my blogs, noted recently, are just that.

Die, sploggers!

See Spam Blogs #3 for a discussion about the scope of the problem.

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Comments

Ron Southern said…
Extreme, but not wrong! Like the Mafia, though, they can't be killed while politicians and the police are protecting them. Grr!
Nitecruzr said…
If anything brings on a worldwide government, it will be the need to control international outlaws like hackers, spammers, and sploggers.

Jesus teaches us to love our enemies, and "turn the other cheek". I still rejoiced when Kushnir got whacked.
Poppy said…
This another layer of knowledge, since I neither know tech stuff nor think like a thief. I am, however, thinking of creating a Blog solely to send a message to the lonely sad little widgets who are consumed with doing evil. Maybe I can pull all of them to the blog and they'll leave rest of Internet alone??? LOL
After only three months my blog got ranked (--and I don't have any INcoming links!) My readership dropped sharply in May, with a few days of Zero, and I thought I suddenly got un-interesting to readers, even though I write about politics, the ways it is enabling disease, and the hump squatting in the Oval. Thanks for info, all news to me.
Poppy
(I've Bookmarked this, to check on future.)
Nitecruzr said…
Poppy,

True dat. Except the lonely sad little widgets who are consumed with doing evil won't care about what you write. Their bankers, and the guys that they buy their luxury cars from, are happy though.

I actually had a brief text chat once with a lonely sad little widget, aka Scott Richter. He did not care at all that everybody but him thought that he was (is) a real sleaze.

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