Skip to main content

Spammers, And Content / Risk Management

Spammers protect their content against "unfair" deletion, and provide uninterrupted service to their "customers", by publishing multiple blogs, in spam blog farms.

Owners of better designed spam blog farms minimise the risk to their blogs, by separating the hacking / porn / spam content (Payload), from the immediately visible Blogger blogs (Collector). Spammers use a tiered structure of blogs, in their blog farms.
  • Collector blogs.
  • Distributor blogs.
  • Payload blogs.
Only the Payload blogs contain easily identified hacking / porn / spam material - and only the Collector blogs are immediately visible to the abuse detection processes.

A tiered blog structure makes a more easily managed spam blog farm.

Collector blogs (lots of these) link to the Distributor blogs (many of these), which link to the Payload blogs (a few of these). This is good risk management, by the spammers, because it separates the visible content from the identifiable content.

In some cases, the Payload "blogs" might be non Google websites. Content hosts which have no objection to hacking / porn / spam content can host the Payload, with no risk.

Risk levels differ, according to content in each blog.

  • Payloads (much risk, because of the detectable hacking / porn / spam content).
  • Collectors (some risk, because of the detectable ads - plus invisible, automated links, to the Distributors).
  • Distributors (little risk, only because of the invisible, automated links, to the Payloads).

As an example, one spam blog farm might be structured in geometrical progression.
Collectors (25) --> Distributors (5) --> Payload (1).
See the triangular structure, and the redundancy?

If automated links were permitted, only the Gateway blogs would be need to be advertised, to Blogger blog readers. If any of the Collector and / or Distributor blogs are detected and removed, the spammer can simply activate more blogs - and the Payload blogs can remain undisturbed.

If any Payload blogs are detected and removed, the spammer simply adds more Payload blogs - then updates the links in the Distributor blogs, with the URLs of the new Payloads. This is good project and risk management.

To interfere with this activity, Blogger prohibits automated linkage of blogs to other blogs and to non Google websites. This forces the spammers to provide visible links between the blogs and websites - and requires them to imaginatively publish both "legitimate" Collectors and Distributors with interesting and unique content and links.

Comments

Annie Cholewa said…
Some of my readers are reporting hearing a short blast of music when they open my and other Blogger blogs in a variety of browsers, and I've experienced the same both on my own blog and elsewhere. I'm assuming this blast of song is coming from an invisible ad. Malware checks etc. reveal nothing, although using Google Chrome to inspect the page source I did see a 3across.com iframe that I didn't recognise. Is it possible for spammers to embed invisible links in Blogger blogs somehow?
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Annie,

Thanks for the question, posted long ago.

A Blogger blog can contain an invisible link, as easily as a non Blogger website.

What you're describing though is probably blogs that (used to) use SiteMeter.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2014/10/rip-sitemeter.html

Popular posts from this blog

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".

With Following, Anonymous Followers Can't Be Blocked

As people become used to Blogger Following as just another tool to connect people, they start to think about the implications . And we see questions like How do I block someone who's been following my blog secretly? I couldn't see her in my Followers list (hence I couldn't use the "Block this user" link), but I have looked at her profile and could see that she's Following my blog. Following, when you look at the bottom line, is no more than a feed subscription and an icon (possibly) displayed on your blog, and linking back to the profile of the Follower in question. If someone Follows your blog anonymously, all that they get is a subscription to the blog feed. If you publish a feed from your blog, and if the feed is open to anybody (which, right now, is the case ), then it's open to everybody. If someone wants to use Following to subscribe to the feed, you can't stop this. You can't block it before, or after, the fact. You can't Block w