Web 2.0, social network, and blogosphere spam - and what to do about it

Sooner or later, every forum moderator, blogger, blog admin, wiki organizer, or Web 2.0 aficionado will have to confront the issue of comment spammers. There are no easy answers. Posting a comment policy statement, such as the Comment Policy for 1389 Mobile Blog, may help to discourage human-generated spam, but 'bot-generated spam will require other measures.

Here are some articles on the topic that may be helpful:

• Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win?
  
• Comment Spammers: Internet Pigs
  
• Spamming Social Networks is a No-No

Sometimes, though, the bloggers and webmasters themselves are to blame for degrading the quality of the blogosphere:

• Content Hypertext Spam

Stumble It!

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Comment Policy for 1389 Mobile Blog

Update: Comments on http://moblog1389.blogspot.com have been closed.

This blog has been migrated to 1389 Blog.

Readers are free to comment on this blog. We want to keep comments open so that readers will be encouraged to participate and interact.

That said, please be advised of the following:

• Commenters are encouraged, but not required, to identify themselves in some manner. Your usual nickname, screen name, logon ID, or other identifier is just fine; you need not use your real name.
• Never post anything that you wouldn't want the entire world to see, perhaps many years from now! Comments are visible to the public without restriction, and, once posted, they remain online indefinitely. Copies of comment text may exist in places that none of us could possibly know about. This blog cannot be responsible for any unwelcome consequences.
• Comments containing anything other than plain text and the permitted HTML tags will be deleted.
• Comments are for text, not pictures. If you want to post ASCII art or the like, please get your own blog. Blogger.com offers blogs for free!
• If a picture, video, audio file, program, or other non-text element is relevant to the subject matter of the blog post, you may upload the file elsewhere if need be, and post a link to it in your comment.
• Do not paste text directly from a WYSIWYG editor, such as a word processor, into the comment editor. This can introduce special formatting characters that the comment editor cannot accept. Instead, paste the text into a text-mode editor, such as Notepad, and then paste it again from there into the comment editor.
• Please make an effort to keep your comments on topic. Comment spam that links to a site having nothing to do with the blog post topic will be deleted.
• This is not a bathroom wall! Comments containing incoherent or unreadable text or data, egregiously vulgar or abusive language, anything xxx-rated, or external links to such material, will be deleted.
• Comments containing anything that violates, or appears to violate, U.S. law will be deleted and the authorities will be notified. This includes, but is not limited to, the following examples:
  • Material associated with fraud, malware, plagiarism, software piracy, child porn, or identity theft
  • Material that violates anyone's privacy or that reveals material not authorized for public viewing
  • Material that promotes jihadism
  • Links to external sites containing anything of the above nature.
• Finally, if you think you might be too drunk to comment, you are too drunk to comment!

Blog Administrator 1389

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Does Blogger.com think your blog is spam?

If you have a blog on Blogger.com, you may find that Blogger has begun requiring you enter an odd-looking string of characters each time you publish a post. This extra step is called "word verification" or "Captcha." You must enter a string of characters to identify yourself as a human being, as opposed to an automated procedure.

Blogger Help gives two reasons for this requirement in Why do I have word verification on my posting form?

1. Blogger suspects that your blog is spam. An automated process within Blogger applies certain filters to identify potential spam blogs or "splogs" - bogus blogs full of gibberish, designed to fool search engines. The endless proliferation of "splogs" causes problems for the Web as a whole, not just for the owners of legitimate blogs, as Wired.com explains in Spam + Blogs = Trouble.
   
   If your blog is flagged as potential spam, then Blogger will require word verification every time you publish a post.
   
   Not only is this a nuisance for you, but it also hurts your efforts to gain readership for your blog. Your blog will be penalized in Google's search algorithms. Moreover, your blog will be excluded from the "Next Blog" taskbar button and the blurbs on Blogger Dashboard.
   
   So what do you do if you know your blog is legitimate? The next time you post to your blog, click on the encircled question mark next to the Word Verification caption. A form will pop up that lets you submit a request for a human review of your blog. Enter your e-mail address, and in a few days, you should get an answer from Blogger Support about clearing your blog for regular use.
   
   
2. You, or your blog team members, have been posting too rapidly. Blogger will require word verification for the next 24 hours to control the load on its servers, as well as to discourage spam. During that period of time, if you post to your blog by e-mail, the blog posts will be held as drafts.
   
   Blogger makes no exceptions for specific blogs, so it's no use contacting them to complain. So if your blog must support an unusually high posting rate, you'll have to host it elsewhere and support it with more specialized software.

Stumble It!

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Spambot zombies infiltrate US military networks

Where's that fake-Viagra spam coming from? You might be surprised! According to this article, security researchers at Support Intelligence have traced spam-sending botnet clients back to networks run by the US military.

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TV and radio ads compete with spam

Television and radio commercials - and not only those low-budget late-night ads - are looking more and more like those offers for fake Viagra, boiler-room get-rich-quick schemes, and worthless diet products that seem to clutter everyone's email.

Billionaire blogger Mark Cuban warns that showing these ads, which are nothing but ripoffs of the consumer, will hurt the reputation and the brand value of the radio or TV station.

In the article Ripoff Commercials = Stupid TV Stations and Networks, Cuban argues that, if a station hasn't sold an ad slot to a quality advertiser, it would be better off not running any ad at all instead of running this garbage. Can't argue with that!

Commenter Trey Tomeny says:

A great observation, Mark. It is especially appalling that so many of the commercials that air on talk radio are for highly questionable get rich quick schemes. Those shows are the product of individual hosts who seem to value their integrity, and then apparently sell it to the highest bidder during the breaks.

By the way, Mark Cuban's blog offers a mobile website - try it and see!

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