Blogger Referral Spam and Twitter

After digging into my monthly stats on Blogger, a pattern emerged of links to apparently legitimate sites that really were not genuine. Instead, they used Twitter’s URL shortening service, T.co, to disguise the page. It turns out that some hits that I thought were real from stumbleupon.com were actually the exact same kind of spam as I previously wrote about here and here. Another falsified website referral using t.co I found was for cultek.com which is a biomedical company.

I have never liked link abbreviating services due to the amount of malicious code, pages, and photos they have been used for. Twitter has launched lawsuits and claim to be filtering how t.co handles links, but so far I am not impressed. It seems like services are always falling behind the black hats in cyberspace, so the moral of the story is for people to be very careful about what they click. Examine the entire link and be reluctant to click on a shortened one.

UPDATE:

Oh the irony. From the time I started writing this post to actually publishing it, another site with referral spam hit me, but not using t.co. This one is ultrafiles . net and is again out of Russia. The title of their website is Linkbucks . com and is another make money off of links site.

UPDATE: A day later, another fake link using devscripts.net and t.co, so the beat goes on.

UPDATE: July 31st brought a new falsified link using the same method, this time posing as myhealthscore.com.

UPDATE: Another one supposedly from filmhill.com that links to a video of how to get “lucky” using a fish. The absurdity is amazing and I am glad I have a little used browser in a sandbox to check these things.

Large and Small

Been an interesting couple of days in the news, so more links that caught my eye:

It has often surprised me how I find stories being reported in the UK on events in the USA that aren't getting a lot of attention, ones that should be.  Take designer children for instance.  I had no clue this was actually being done, now I find the specter of eugenics rearing its ugly head again reported in a foreign newspaper.  The narcisissm and selfishness of people is astounding, allowing immoral acts like this to be profitable.  Simply wrong and not good for our culture.

I refuse to "tweet." For those unfamiliar with the term, it is posting short little snippets on Twitter.  If Twitter (actually all texting) isn't a sign of the dumbing down of the West, I don't know what is.  Now it is being compromised, just like MySpace and Facebook have, with worm attacks. While not as severe, it shows the inherent weakness of social networking sites to data theft.  I'm on Facebook and never warmed to it due to the triviality of the atmosphere, so my checking in is getting more infrequent. Frankly, it is a stultifyingly boring time waster.

Two years ago, Rushford, MN flooded and amongst the losses was the Tenborg Community Center.  It was a great place to hold political conventions and meetings, located at a reasonable distance for people from Fillmore, Houston, and Winona counties.  I grew fond of the place and was saddened by it becoming a total loss, when I'd hoped it would be rebuilt or at least replace by a new one.  Now it looks very much like the financial disaster of our time is making it unlikely, unless help from private enterprise enters the picture. That's too bad, as Rushford is a good location.

Things could be worse. At least I don't have a former neighbor trying to blow me up with a mail bomb.  Even small towns have weird things like this happening these days, so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by Houston, MN getting its share.  Fortunately, no one was harmed, but still...