The Real Blogger Status

As Blogger continues their efforts to classify and remove abusive use of Blogger resources , they are adapting and sharpening their fuzzy spam classification process . The sharpening enables them to righteously classify more spam blogs, and to spuriously classify less genuine blogs. This improvement is good - to everybody but the would be publishers of hacking, porn, and spam content. The victims of Blogger's success - the spammers - are being forced to change their techniques, and to outsource their controversial content to other sites. The spammers are going to both improve their technique, and to double or quadruple their efforts. Spammers use other peoples computers to do their work - so quadrupling their efforts simply means using more bots, and sending out more spam. That's a simple, low cost solution. This month, we have activity in BHF: How Do I? and BHF: Something Is Broken , possibly intending to probe the nature of the fuzzy classification process. That...

The 1978 cinema classic " Animal House ", which starred the late, great John Belushi as John Blutarsky, was a comedy about American 1960s college life. It was described by one reviewer as the best college comedy ever made. Nothing has ever come close to comedic perfection, and never will again. It focused on one fictional fraternity, Delta House, the rejects of the campus fraternity system at the college. The members of Delta house included screaming nuisances ( coyotes ), troglodytes and trolls ( hyenas ), and hapless morons ( turkeys ). Many inhabitants of Delta House, many years later, can be found as bloggers, posting in Blogger Help Forum . Coyotes are individuals who, unhappy with the way they are treated by Blogger, convince the general public (their reader population) to conduct a Distributed Denial Of Service attack against the forum. The owners of their namesake blog, The Daily Coyote , conducted a DDOS in April 2008, when it was locked as a suspected spam blog...

In my musings last month about spam blogs, and people victimised by spam blogs , I analogised the legendary college secret societies , and the impersonal and rude treatment of the unfortunates who did not get initiated. eventually, those who don't get elected will open their eyes, remove the blindfold, and find herself / himself in a pitiful group of rejects, all waiting (hopelessly) for that tap. The tap that never comes.

I've been advising folks about spam problems, and splog detection (both righteous and spurious ), for several years. Sometimes, the advice is about cleaning up the blog, and submitting it for review . Other times, it's about blogs unjustly accused of being spam . Occasionally, it's about a spam blog, that just can't be reviewed again , or maybe a old blog, that you just can't regain control .

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.

I'll be honest here. I was a nerd in college (and I am one even now ). So this story is one that I've only seen in movies - neither I, nor my friends, got even this far. College Secret Societies Some of them have no name even. There are no published entrance rules - membership is by invitation only, and rules are communicated by word of mouth. And the initiation process starts like this: The prospective members are blindfolded, and led to a dark room. The prospective members are put into a circle, in silence. The prospective members wait, for what will happen, they are told nothing. Periodically, one prospect will feel a slight tap on the shoulder. In silence, he / she will be taken by the hand, and led into another room where they will join the elite. And eventually, those who don't get elected will open their eyes, remove the blindfold, and find herself / himself in a pitiful group of rejects, all waiting (hopelessly) for that tap. The tap that never comes.

Every day in Blogger Help Group, we see the naive yet plaintive queries I want to setup a new blog. The perfect address for my new blog would be xxxxxxx.blogspot.com. But today I found this message at that address: Sorry, the blog at xxxxxxx.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs. Who do I speak to at Blogger, to get that address released to me? or There are a lot of blogspot names that are taken and never used with no way to contact the owner of the blog to see if they're willing to part with the name. Any suggestions? or Is there any way to obtain a blogspot name that is currently being used by someone but has been inactive?

Until January 2008, Blogger maintained the Blogosphere very loosely. As a result, the "Next Blog" link in the Navbar would, quite likely, load on your computer a blog which you wouldn't want your kids to view. This was the result of what I believe to be a well organised criminal, hacking campaign which used BlogSpot.Com to host blogs that led, intentionally, to hacking content designed to make your computer part of another botnet . There was a side effect to the hacking activity. The front end to that activity used porn - in various forms - to entice the reader to click into the blogs containing the hacking activity. And, with the thousands of blogs that were part of the hacking activity, came the smaller operators, who innocently provided adult content, though not with illegal activity intended. Personal blogs, that contain porn.

In mid January 2008, Blogger started to do something about a major problem . Blogger blogs have been long used for illegal purposes - hacking, porn distribution, and spam distribution - in massive numbers. Cleaning up the hacking, porn, and spam is not an easy task - there's nothing on any one blog that says This blog is used for hacking, for porn distribution, and / or for spam distribution. Detection of such illegal blogs, like detection of malware in general , has to be done by heuristic analysis and signature comparison. Unfortunately, detection of illegal blogs, like detection of malware, using both methods, are subject to two major problems False Negative Detection - Many illegal blogs are not detected, because the authors of such blogs are very skilled at making their blogs like normal blogs. False Positive Detection - Many legitimate blogs are falsely detected, again because the authors of the illegal blogs are very skilled at making their blogs look like normal blogs...

Every week, JohnBlogger or some other indignant blogger posts in one of the Google Blogger Help forums Hey, you need to get rid of blog http://obnoxiousblog.blogspot.com . In most cases, they are doing a good and noble thing - informing Blogger (through the forum) that obnoxiousblog needs to be purged. Sometimes, a Blogger Employee will cruise through the forum, see the post, and remove obnoxiousblog. But this won't happen all of the times, and it won't happen immediately. And until obnoxiousblog is removed, JohnBlogger is helping the criminals that provide obnoxiousblog, and others like it. And obnoxiousblog (and others like it) are part of immense groups of splogs , that are used for hacking, and providing you with more spam in your email, in your online discussions, and in the web in general . And, even if it does happen, and Blogger purges obnoxiousblog, there will be 10 like it to take its place , almost immediately. Hundreds of splogs like obnoxiousblog are posted dai...

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.