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A few days ago I published a story on ZenZuu a new social networking site that promises to pay 80% of their revenue to users. Since my blog is relatively new, I decided to submit to a few social media sites to get my story read. After only a few hours I received a two trackbacks to my blog and no comments. Before approving the trackbacks so they appear in the comments section, I checked the sites in order to verify their content only to find out the sites in question where two spam blogs or splogs as many people call them.
How the spam blogs looked like:
- No real content only a small scraped paragraph from my story with a false blog name as the original source and linking to my site (to alert me of a trackback)
- A few photos that where disguised as you tube videos with comments.
- Upon mousing over the images that where disguised as videos the browser detects a link to Zango rather than a video. Zango is a really popular adware and spyware program that not only slows your pc, it hijacks affiliate links and changes them to the spammers own making you earn no money. Note: After a successful installation, Zango starts opening pop ups in the visitor’s browser causing a real chaos in that person’s or your own online experience. If the infected visitor buys something from a website it really doesn’t matter if it’s your page or anyones page the only person making money is the guy who uploaded it to the visitor as long it is an affiliate link of a program that the Zango spammer participates in.
- Lots of pop ups and banners coming out of nowhere when you open the home page.
- No blog posts
The spam blogger’s strategy was simple:
- By linking to my story I would get a track back message which would be displayed close to the comments section in my blog
- If the trackback was accepted readers entering my blog would notice the trackback message in my blog and maybe follow the trackback to read on what the other blog would say about the topic I was discussing.
- He would bait readers with false videos that displayed curiosities. For example, one of the false videos claimed o be a video about a person eating a lizard.
- If a visitor clicks on a false video they would be asked to install a program to be able to watch the video. Presto! Zango is installed on the visitors computer, the nightmare begins if he doesn’t know how to spot spyware.
- The spammer would cash in from the visitors actions especially if he buys somehing from clickbank or from zango’s pop ups.
How do I know they came from a social media site ?
Here is the evidence:
- The web analytics program I currently use displayed a very popular social media site as the referring page for all my visits at the time .
- My post was recent and was not indexed yet
- Whois data showed the location of the spammer since Whois data shows even the hosting companies details of the contract and coincided in the same home location for visitor ip in the analytics program.
- Only one visitor from that geographical location was detected
- Only a few total visits that day so my work was easier than expected.
My advice to bloggers is to always examine closely comments and trackbacks. Never allow all comments automatically, use the moderate all comments option on your blogging platform. As a general rule, examine URls from commentators before approval. Allowing comments and trackbacks from bad neighborhoods will surely destroy your page rank if your blog does follow. Even worst a visitor that gets infected by an adware program from a link in your site, even if its from a comment or a trackback and not your own, may think that your site is not reliable and may never return. You will save some people from headaches including you by examining closely what appears in your blog.
Comments and opinions needed. What do you think ?
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