The Real Blogger Status

One blog publishing technique, discouraged by Blogger , involves "automated posting". Content created with scripts and programs , rather than by hand. Some blog owners want to make their blog part of their social networking strategy. That is a laudable goal - but the blog has to have its own distinct content , as well.

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.

One of the reasons why The Shell Game / Three Card Monte is a legendary fixture, in some cities, is that it's a favourite feature in some magic shows. The magician uses sleight of hand to move the pea or Queen of Spades around, and confuse the audience. It's the same game, just in different settings. The street corner version is more exciting. You're trying to win some money, and the scammer is trying to steal your camera, purse, or wallet. The parlor show is more fun. You're seated, having a drink, and watching. You pay for either show - just in different ways.

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we see the innocent question How do I redirect traffic, automatically, from my Blogger blog to my WordPress blog? or I just moved my blog to a real website - how do I get my readers from my Blogger blog to my website? This need, like redirecting traffic between BlogSpot URLs , is one feature that Blogger will probably not ever provide. If Blogger were to allow the automatic forwarding of traffic, from a Blogger blog to a non Google website, spammers could use BlogSpot blogs as gateways, and move their spam content around , at will. You can redirect traffic from a BlogSpot URL to a non BlogSpot URL - but you must use a properly setup custom domain , to do this. You can combine your Blogger blog(s) with a non Google website , if you think about it. Setup a virtual host pair, in the website domain. Publish your blog to the virtual host. Add a custom link bar to the blog, and the website. Use the same template on the blog and the webs...

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we see the innocent question How do I redirect traffic, automatically, from one BlogSpot blog to another? or I just changed my blog name - how do I get my readers from the old URL to the new one? And this is one feature that Blogger will probably not ever provide.

Up until last week, I would advise folks looking for traffic to their blogs that they should publish, publish, publish . Besides friends and family, your initial readers will come through the "Next Blog" link, randomly. You get more "Next Blog" traffic from posting more, less from posting less. And, you'll need this initial traffic. Last week, with the new "Next Blog" link, all of that changed. Now, people hitting "Next Blog" get another blog, but with 2 major differences from the possibility last week. The "next blog" linked to will be chosen for similar content / subject, and same language, as the blog being displayed currently. The "next blog" linked to will not be chosen relevant to updating activity. You're just as likely to get a blog published to 5 years ago, as 5 minutes ago. This gives us two concerns, which we did not have earlier. Finding other blogs of random subject and recent updates won't be as ...

One noticeable spam problem became visible in late 2009, thanks to yet another Blogger error. This error left a lot of bloggers ( some legitimate and others actually spammers ) reporting both confusion and indignation.

Every day, well intentioned bloggers post anxious demands in Google Blogger Help Group This person listed their blog in several forums. As an admin of two of them, I have had many complaints over it about spamming. We have blocked his address from our forums, but it seems he has many of them and he keeps spamming it hourly. Please shut this blog down. http://bigspamblog.blogspot.com So getting "bigspamblog.blogspot.com" removed should be such a simple task, but it's not. The problem is that, for everybody who reports a spam blog in BHG, someone else reports that their blog was just falsely accused of being a spam blog . Not every blog reported to be a splog actually is a splog, and not everybody reporting a splog actually is reporting a splog to get it removed. So Blogger has to verify each spam blog report, before acting on a demand posted here. Many spammers post in BHG OMG, remove bigspamblog.blogspot.com! and while we wait for Blogger to take action, they watch th...

In every city of any decent size, you'll find con artists who are interested in one thing - your money. One of the most common short con games , that you'll find on the streets of most cities, is The Shell Game , or an alternative version Three Card Monte . In both The Shell Game and Three Card Monte, you attempt to track the location of an object, while it's being moved around in front of you. With The Shell Game, a small object - maybe a pea - will be placed under a shell or a bottlecap, and the shell (and 2 other shells without peas) will be shuffled around the playing surface. With Three Card Monte, a playing card of significant identity (for example the Queen of Spades) is shuffled around with 2 other cards. The object of these games is for you to be able to immediately identify the hidden object, and its position in the group of three, when the shuffling stops.

The Blogosphere currently has a real problem - active hacking, and obnoxious unwanted commercial "adult" content, is in 1 out of every 3 blogs being published. Do some "Next Blog" surfing , and see what I mean. I wrote, originally, about this problem a little over a month ago . I published an update last Friday , indicating that the problem isn't going away, and Blogger hasn't done anything to solve it. Yesterday, the problem changed direction. This is what we had a month ago (and last week). That's a dead web site. http://aff-friend-finderwvghpcb.blogspot.com/ Note the blog name, in the URL. aff-friend-finderwvghpcb aff-friend-finder <== Name wvghpcb <== Suffix Possibly to make their blog setup faster or more scalable, the sploggers stopped using dictionary words in the blog names. Here's a (slightly altered) entry taken from the Recently Updated Blogs list, during the morning of 10/15/2007. That's not the actual URL, as I do not li...

The Blogosphere currently has a real problem - active hacking, and obnoxious unwanted commercial "adult" content, is in 1 out of every 3 blogs being published. Do some "Next Blog" surfing, and see what I mean. A little over 1 month ago , I went Next Blog surfing, and today, I repeated my experience. And the figures haven't changed. Today, I surfed through 20 blogs, 2 of them were financial scams, and 6 were obnoxious "adult" content. I should add, "adult" content of low quality. Total crap. And of the "adult" content, one variant seen frequently has been found to contain active hacking attempts. Until Blogger fixes the problem, I will encourage all concerned Bloggers to remove the Navbar from your blogs . And let Blogger know that you're concerned about the problem - use both the Blogger Contact Form , and the Blogger Wishlist . >> Forum thread links: bX-*00065 >> Copy this tag: bX-*00065 >> Top

If you do any "Next Blog" surfing, you've seen these. You may not call them "AFF Splogs", but you've probably noticed them. Statiscally, they make up 1/3 of the Blogosphere, in "blogspot.com". Finding them isn't hard - just go Surfing. http://www.blogger.com/next-blog?navBar=true Identifying them isn't really hard, once you've seen a few. Here's an obvious one. Aff Friend Finder (this one is dead, now, so I will show it to you). http://aff-friend-finderwvghpcb.blogspot.com/ Note the URL. aff-friend-finderwvghpcb aff-friend-finder <== Name wvghpcb <== Suffix Obviously, being generated by a script. Names are very brief (1 - 3 words, English). A suffix of random alphabetic characters is appended to the name, giving a unique URL. The template used is a pattern too. Frequently Rounders, or 897. Monochrome backgrounds, no customisation, very plain. A single linklist at the top of the sidebar, the last item in the linklist w...

The Storm Worm is a popular name used for a family of malware, properly classified as a Trojan, which has been plaguing the Internet for several months. It started with the widely circulated spam, about the Storms in Europe, which hit everybody's Inboxes earlier this year. The spam email started out distributing the worm in attachments to the email, and later changed to delivering it from web sites linked in the spam. Symantec: New Storm Front Moving In tells us that the typical email would contain a link to a "secure" web site, and the linked web site would contain the instruction If you do not see the Secure Login Window, please install our Secure Login Applet. Now, it is being distributed through Blogger, from blogs marketed to those surfing the Blogosphere through the "Next Blog" link . It can be seen in a Blog*Spot splog farm, with blogs using intriguing titles like "Dying To Live", "Katrina Thanks", and "Rocking Consumption...

In my previous post Evil Blogs , I mentioned a blog pushing a rogue security product known as E r r o r P r o t e c t o r. E r r o r P r o t e c t o r is part of a family of rogue security products, which contains the infamous (in the security community) W i n A n t i V i r u s. The latter product is being pushed from a splog farm currently resident in Blog*Spot. I went "Next Blog" surfing yesterday, and discovered half a dozen splogs in this farm. (Note): The splog census is being provided, in private, to responsible parties. Not here. McAfee Site Advisor has a lot to say about the web site for W i n A n t i V i r u s , none of it good. W i n A n t i V i r u s is part of the WinFixer family. For more information about WinFixer, see SpywareGuide: WinFixer Sunbelt Counter-Spy: WinFixer Symantec: Winfixer WikiPedia: WinFixer >> Top

Blogger Blogs is a big online community, and like most online communities, it has several problems. It is simple, and easy to use. This causes it to have a lot of newbies who need constant help. It is large, and easy to use. This causes it to have a lot of bad guys, operating in the chaos caused by the first group. It is large, with a support staff that concentrates on the overall trends, and seldom on the details. Again, making it easy for the intelligent bad guys to operate without punishment. All of these factors make it a very nice place for malevolent individuals, which I simply describe as hackers . Usually, the hacking isn't worth the time that it takes to post an article, or it's so well known that my writing becomes superfluous. So I generally don't bother. This time, I'll make an exception. E r r o r P r o t e c t o r DOT B l o g s p o t DOT C o m Note that I'm providing the above link through PKBlogs, as I have no intention of providing unprotected lin...