Site Vandalism is what you call the kinds of comment spamming and abuse that is perpetrated by the low life’s of the internet, the bottom feeders.
Blogs make the perfect target for spammers/vandals/thread hijackers because they are interactive by nature. They are dynamic by design and it keeps the content fresh. thats the whole Idea. I’ve touched on this subject before, but only briefly.
Blog abuse is a common phenominon and it almost always takes place in replies to an original article or post. There are several methods that are used to accomplish this. The most common are pingbacks and trackbacks which allow comments to be made remotely from another source, sort of a “long distance ” reply to an article or post on the blog in question. There are varying goals that drive these bogus comments and a pandora’s box of methods. One of the most prolific kinds of posting garbage are responses to original posts that are entered into the blog automatically by a program called a “Web Crawler”, “Spider”, or ” ‘Bot “.
The crawler looks for blogs, carrying a postable remark to deliver to them that has various purposes, from porn links, to redirects from a link into a malicious attack web site. They usually have legitimate looking names and identifications in the multiple links and may even appear to be a legitimate remark to a post. Some are just plain obvious and make open referances to various fetishes and positions. Whatever.
The folks that have been blogging for a while take some simple steps like prohibiting posts without reviewing them first, and using Akismet to catch them, which is 99.9% effective. I recommend Askimet, because it’s a simple to use tool that does the work for the blogger. It can be left alone to do it’s job automatically if the blogger likes. It’s free, and it’s superb.
For the readers and participants of a blog, you should let the administrator know if something smelly gets through the net. Even the best set up can get hit. Letting the admin know will make your experience better, and go a long way toward fighting the bad guys. Security holes get plugged when a significant problem is discovered.
Happy blogging, and happy surfing, and let’s help each other out here in the wilds of cyberdom
The bottom feeders of the internet.
Site Vandalism is what you call the kinds of comment spamming and abuse that is perpetrated by the low life’s of the internet, the bottom feeders.
Blogs make the perfect target for spammers/vandals/thread hijackers because they are interactive by nature. They are dynamic by design and it keeps the content fresh. thats the whole Idea. I’ve touched on this subject before, but only briefly.
Blog abuse is a common phenominon and it almost always takes place in replies to an original article or post. There are several methods that are used to accomplish this. The most common are pingbacks and trackbacks which allow comments to be made remotely from another source, sort of a “long distance ” reply to an article or post on the blog in question. There are varying goals that drive these bogus comments and a pandora’s box of methods. One of the most prolific kinds of posting garbage are responses to original posts that are entered into the blog automatically by a program called a “Web Crawler”, “Spider”, or ” ‘Bot “.
The crawler looks for blogs, carrying a postable remark to deliver to them that has various purposes, from porn links, to redirects from a link into a malicious attack web site. They usually have legitimate looking names and identifications in the multiple links and may even appear to be a legitimate remark to a post. Some are just plain obvious and make open referances to various fetishes and positions. Whatever.
The folks that have been blogging for a while take some simple steps like prohibiting posts without reviewing them first, and using Akismet to catch them, which is 99.9% effective. I recommend Askimet, because it’s a simple to use tool that does the work for the blogger. It can be left alone to do it’s job automatically if the blogger likes. It’s free, and it’s superb.
For the readers and participants of a blog, you should let the administrator know if something smelly gets through the net. Even the best set up can get hit. Letting the admin know will make your experience better, and go a long way toward fighting the bad guys. Security holes get plugged when a significant problem is discovered.
Happy blogging, and happy surfing, and let’s help each other out here in the wilds of cyberdom
Denigris