A Multicourse Meal of Spam

Though Google and Microsoft have made targeting spammers world wide a priority the last couple of years, the spam still keeps coming. That’s true for referral spam targeting blogs especially Blogger and Wordpress hosted ones. Clearing out my back log of more than questionable referrals highlights the wide variety of spam out there.

Remember folks to never click on strange or suspicious links in your referrals – or anywhere else for that matter. Leave it to people crazy or secured enough to investigate the trash that gets past the junk filters.

As an appetizer, I present a tastefully designed site, http : // hand-made-soaps . com / homemade-lotion-recipes /, that offers recipes and tip on making your own soaps. This is not something normally associated with spammers, since they tend to be a dirty lot who don’t get out of their small apartments very often. Looks bland enough, but it hides a potent kick.

Clicking on the green buttons on various posts reveals this to be a click referral farming operation. What does that mean? Simple, they get paid for each click that comes from the site. The kick comes from the green buttons leading to sites that have absolutely nothing to do with the text on them!

I wonder if this was once a real site that got taken over by hackers or by a new owner?

For the first course, I offer up http : // rgsu . tomsk . ru / which is actually a side dish for the Russian State Social University located in Tomsk. Would you want to go to a place of higher learning that resorts to spamming? Neither would I.

Perhaps the next course will be more filling. It comes in two parts, http : //brooklyn-ads . com / category  /items-for-sale / tickets-and-travel / and http : // brooklyn-ads . com / category / automobiles /. Free classified ads for Brooklyn, New York City residents seems really odd given I don’t live there.

Why they are spamming me, I don’t know. Maybe one of those love spells for sale went awry…

Looking the site over, there are quite a few spam listings, questionable listings, and flat out scam listings. Inappetizing, isn’t it?

Okay, how about another course? This one suits a romantic candlelit dinner for two courtesy of http : // datingandtravel . com / girls-let-him-but-dont-expect-it /, another click farming operation. Social engineering works, which is why you see so many appeals to lonely hearts or worries about one’s manhood. Not a lot of work went into cooking up this site and it shows.

You look a little green, however we are only at the halfway point of the meal!

I’m sure you have room for another entrée. How about a little fast food? http : //www . 200please . com / speed / (my blog address) promises to show you how fast your website loads compared to others near you. For fun I threw in the address of the next course for a tasty preview.

Not really a useful service and to be avoided because of spamming in the first place.

Time for something spicy. http : // blogs . rediff . com / dpqawtza delivers scantily clad women and promises of porn. It doesn’t really deliver on either being yet another click farming operation. The button repeated throughout the fake blog leads to a business advice site of all things. I could tell that from mousing over the button!

All the text is generated from various sentences culled from all over, resulting in something that manages to be profane, Shakespearean, commentary, and login. Yeah, they even culled login text from other sites and put it in the body.

If you don’t like that, how about a milder version? http : // kxyfinzfy . over-blog . com / ditches the bimbos but keeps the same recipe of mixing everything possible. In fact, they put it in a blender so that sections of sentences don’t match. Warning: explicit text content can be found at it and the previous site.

Not that you would really want to go there.

If the meal was disappointing, I promise the dessert will be better. http : // qxjufasu . skyrock . com / has arrived… wait, no it hasn’t. My apologies, only a 404 can be found.

Actually, that’s my favorite kind of spam!