<$BlogRSDUrl$>


Thursday, November 30, 2006

Today's Spammer Oddity 

Here's another odd thing about spam. In recent weeks Locus has gotten a trickle of comment spam -- submissions via comment forms on the website, submissions that are full of generic comments ("Great site!") and reams of URLs. Typically these come in pairs, one via the comment form on the Locus Online 'contact' page, and the other via the comment form on the Cory Doctorow essay from Locus Magazine's September issue.

The odd thing is, these spam are still attacking the *September* Cory essay page, but not the more recent November Cory essay page.

It's as if the spammers aren't each trolling the website (or by extension, all websites) for easily accessible email addresses and comments forms. It's as if some intermediate does such a troll periodically, and passes on the available contact links to a bunch of other spam providers. The interval the former updates means the latter are still using a September comments form and not a November one.

Isn't that interesting?
Comments:
The "intermediate" of which you speak is not human, it's "bot" software that scours the web looking for properly named fields and "mailto" tags. All the spammer does is click "go" and attach their ad links or, worse, trojan horses that scour your personal computer for private/financial information.
 
Post a Comment


king under the dome

doctorow makers

banks transition

kress steal sky

atwood year flood

roberts yellow blue tibia

wilson julian comstock

 ness ask and answer

collins catching fire

collins hunger games

sawyer flashforward

baker hotel

disch proteus

tan tales

mazzucchelli asterios

zebrowski empties

morrow shambling

hamilton cpt future

beckett genesis

meller evo rx

bsg2

kurzweil transcend

sawyer wake

ness knife never letting go

barzak love we share

mcewan cement garden

holland sci-fi art

gladwell outliers

bittman food matters

baggini what's it all about

Still in progress:

ross rest is noise

aldiss billion year spree

pollan omnivore's dilemma



Mark R. Kelly
Profile
Email

The opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of Mark R. Kelly, and do not reflect the editorial position of Locus Magazine.
Locus
Links
Latest Posts
Archives

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?