Um, Shag...Pork is form heven. Sadly, SPAM is made from pig, presumably, some portion pork...however, SPAM is NOT from heaven. ;)
On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 1:32 AM, Ronald Methvin <[email protected]> wrote: > Maybe they think people who read a Firestorm blog are bigger suckers ;) > > ~Ron > > ------------------------------ > *From:* "[email protected]" <[email protected]> > *To:* [email protected] > *Sent:* Tue, May 10, 2011 12:12:33 AM > *Subject:* RE: [The Unique Geek] Thought this was interesting given our > occasional spammer to the list serve > > Apparently my spammers haven't gotten that smart yet. All the URLs I get > are totally obvious. > > Spam is a weird thing. My Firestorm blog averages about 75 Spam comments a > day (thank goodness for Akismet!), whereas my Once Upon a Geek blog is > averaging only about 10 Spam comments a day. It's weird because my > Firestorm blog gets way fewer hits than my other blog. Regardless, Akismet > is from heaven! > > > The Irredeemable Shag > http://firestormfan.com > http://onceuponageek.com > http://twitter.com/onceuponageek > > > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: Re: [The Unique Geek] Thought this was interesting given our > occasional spammer to the list serve > From: Jennifer Walker <[email protected]> > Date: Mon, May 09, 2011 10:00 am > To: [email protected] > > I've been getting those bing.com and yahoo.com "comments" this last week > on old webcomic posts. I give them credit for craftiness as Akismet has yet > to catch up to this tactic but, really, the commenter always seems to > misspell one of the last words. Every. single. comment. > > On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 9:24 AM, Cary Preston <[email protected]> wrote: > >> For most of you, Tetherd Cow is an unfolding story of antics in Cow >> World that plays out on a fairly linear daily or weekly basis. You know how >> it goes – I post a story, you comment, we have a some fun repartee and then >> we move on. Very civilized. But because I have an expansive overview of The >> Cow (a Cowish ‘omnipotence’ as it were) the Cowiverse looks somewhat >> different to me. I see a whole lot of stuff to which you are not privvy. >> There is, for example, activity that occurs way back in time, in posts that >> have had their moment in the sun and are never visited again except by the >> occasional lost web traveller. Or by spammers. Spammers discovered long ago >> that the vast hinterland of forgotten blog comments provides another fertile >> venue for their pathetic attempts to hawk various car insurance/viagra/cheap >> mortgage/locksmith(i<http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=11837#footnote_0_11837> >> ) schemes. Because visiting millions of blogs and posting comments is >> (quite obviously) a tedious and time consuming task, the spammers have >> mostly relegated this drudgework to bots. Sometimes very clever bots, but >> bots all the same. Bots are mostly pretty easy to defeat, and these days >> most bot comments get swept up by blog spam utilities and never see the >> light of day.(ii <http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=11837#footnote_1_11837>) >> Recently, though, a new spamming ruse appears to be on the rise. This >> technique requires *real people* to spend time browsing around blogs and >> posting comments and linking their names to some crap or >> other.(iii<http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=11837#footnote_2_11837> >> ) Here’s one that I got yesterday: >> This was a comment left on my post >> *Ooze*<http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=7613#comments>which you may remember >> concerned the curious fungus that once appeared in my >> backyard. On the face of it, ‘Jeff’ appears to be taking an interest in the >> post and leaving a pertinent comment – he is obviously not a bot. >> What the spammers don’t appear to understand, though, is that when a >> commenter leaves his or her mark on TCA comments, I can tell all kinds of >> things about them other than just their email address and their name. I >> know, for instance, that while Jeff Morgan is (most likely) a real person, >> with a real Bigpond email address, it is not the real Jeff Morgan who has >> visited my blog. Someone has stolen his name and email address for the >> purposes of making their spam look legitimate. The clue to Fake Jeff’s real >> agenda is written clear in two places – one is in his IP address which comes >> out of Pakistan, and the other is in ‘his’ website which is easily >> recognizable(iv <http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=11837#footnote_3_11837>) as >> a ‘front-door’ for a spam operation linking off to various kinds of crummy >> products.(v <http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=11837#footnote_4_11837>) >> As is usual in these cases, I leave the comment intact and ‘repair’ the >> weblink to take it somewhere a little more >> useful.(vi<http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=11837#footnote_5_11837> >> ) This morning though, I got a rather intriguing one of these ‘comments’ >> from ‘Mircea’: >> This one appeared in my post *We’re All >> DOOMED!*<http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=8767#comments>as a reply to Cissy >> Strutt. Unlike Jeff’s comment, it only half makes sense, >> but I have had far more incomprehensible legitimate comments in my time. >> ‘Mircea’ evidently thinks that by embedding it in the flow of commenting >> (he/she would have to have physically clicked the ‘Reply’ button) that it >> would go unnoticed.(vii<http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=11837#footnote_6_11837> >> ) But I don’t see comments the same way as commenters do, and for me it’s >> a trivial exercise to spot it as spam. Here’s part of what I see: >> Did you see the very interesting thing here, Cowpokes? ‘Mircea’ appears >> to be spamming for Microsoft. Oh, I’m sure that Microsoft would deny having >> anything to do with such a practice. They would, most likely, claim that >> *anyone* can type *any* URL in the web field and that they can’t be held >> responsible for random punters being fans of their search engine. But It is >> easy for me to see that ‘Mircea’ is not a legitimate entity: she/he has an >> IP in Quebec and an ISP in Germany – a very curious and probably impossible >> combination. Additionally, this is not the only one of these I’ve had in >> recent times. >> There is a bit of discussion going on about this >> elsewhere<http://www.google.com.au/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=microsoft+bing+spam+comments&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&ei=m_zFTavLBobWvQO-zKGuAQ>, >> and one suggestion has been that the Bing URL is being truncated in some way >> and that Bing (and Yahoo as it turns >> out)(viii<http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=11837#footnote_7_11837> >> ) are just victims of a software snafu. But I want to point out that the >> way these blog commenting systems work does not support that conclusion – if >> people are physically reading the posts and entering comments, they are also >> physically entering the URLs they have been given to promote. To put it in >> clear terms, ‘Mircea’ is a fraudulent identity who has visited an >> historically distant Tetherd Cow Ahead post with the sole intention of >> leaving a link to Bing. >> _________________________________________________________________________ >> *Footnotes:* >> >> 1. Yes. A New York locksmith and his pals were, apparently, touring >> the blogosphere and leaving comments in an attempt to boost their >> linkability. Rather sad, really. >> 2. My spam tools automatically shift such comments into the spam >> graveyard without me even being aware of them. On average, TCA gets about >> forty of these a day. >> 3. The technical reason they do this is to increase the number of >> legitimate websites ‘linking’ to their garbage product. This, in turn, >> increases their search ranking in various engines. Search engines find it >> easy to defeat standard spambot link farming, but this kind of ‘human’ bot >> requires (so far) human brains to intercept. And not only that, human >> brains >> that understand the context of *their own* blogs. >> 4. By a *person*, at least. >> 5. Typically, these ‘front’-door’ sites are set up as link farms into >> products that the spammer has been paid to ‘advertise’. They are >> disposable >> sites that will be abandoned as soon as they are busted, only to spring up >> somewhere else in a matter of minutes. The spammers probably have >> thousands >> of them on the shelf, ready to go. >> 6. I usually redirect it to the JREF <http://www.randi.org/>, because >> I think if there’s one thing we could do with a whole heap more of in this >> world, it’s some rational thinking. Can’t ever have too many links to the >> JREF <http://www.randi.org/>. Did I mention the >> JREF<http://www.randi.org/> >> ? >> 7. And I guess on a lot of blogs maybe it would have. >> 8. I’ve also had several linked off to Yahoo. >> >> _________________________________________________________________________ >> >> >> <http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=11837>http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=11837 >> >> >> >> Sent with MobileRSS >> HD<http://itunes.apple.com/app/mobilerss-hd-google-rss-news/id375300540?mt=8> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "The Unique Geek" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected]. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek?hl=en. >> > > > > -- > Jennifer "Scraps" Walker > Queen of the Helper Monkeys > > Better living through creativity... and cocktails! > http://www.scrapsoflife.com/blog > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Unique Geek" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek?hl=en. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Unique Geek" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek?hl=en. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Unique Geek" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Unique Geek" group. 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