Blog comment spam and reporting spam

[mediaslice]

Hi,

I received some comment spam on my blog. I have various tools on my blog to stop spam, but out of curiosity I had a look at some of the spam comments I was receiving.

First of all I would like to ask why do people do it? Putting gibberish comments with some bizarre links in them? There doesn't seem to be any reason for doing it other than general annoyance. Also they get no SEO benefit from the links as all URLs in comments have the rel=nofollow. Everyone knows that Search Engine algorithms are far too sophisticated for pages to benefit from this old black-hat tactic of obtaining links.

Secondly I came across one URL in my comment spam and when clicked I was forwarded to the domain http://www.abusepost.com/ which appears to have been put up by SpamCop. The heading says "This site will be closed in five days for a comment and e-mail spam. If you have suffered from actions of this site, please, fill this form below."

The strange thing is that this page then asks for your name and email address. Is this a con just to get your email address and be spammed even more? Or is it genuinely trying to help.

When measuring the trust worthiness of a site I usually use two tools, Google page rank and Alexa page rank. However when I was forwarded to this domain there was 0 page rank and a high Alexa ranking, which leads me to believe it is an untrustworthy site.

Could this be another clever scam for the Spammers to obtain another valid email address??

If it a genuine page from SpamCop then I think it would be a good to take a leaf out Google's book. If you go to their spam reporting page http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html it doesn't ask for contact details, just report the problem.

I am new to this forum so any comments on this would be useful.

[dra007]

SpamCop will never ask you for an e-mail address unless you willingly visit their site to register and configure your mailhosts for reporting. All spamcop web pages have spamcop.net in the name. Spamcop.com is another impersonator. What you describe sounds like a bogus, joejob/phisher attempt.

[Wazoo]

Kicked an e-mail upstream to advise of some possible legal action by those pesky lawyers ....

Domain Name:abusepost.com

Record last updated at 2006-08-04 03:38:13

Record created on 2006/8/4

Record expired on 2007/8/4

Domain servers in listed order:

ns1.abusepost.com ns2.abusepost.com

Administrator:

Name-- John Smith

EMail-: (manager[at]abusepost.com)

tel --: +1.2024783654

org: Abuse Post Inc.

3520 Wisconsin Ave NW

Washington,DC,US 20016

08/18/06 11:50:53 Slow traceroute www.abusepost.com

Trace www.abusepost.com (66.230.167.245) ...

Registrant:

John Smith manager[at]abusepost.com +1.2024783654

Abuse Post Inc.

3520 Wisconsin Ave NW

Washington,DC,US 20016

08/18/06 11:51:07 Browsing http://www.abusepost.com/

Fetching http://www.abusepost.com/ ...

<!-- saved from url=(0023)http://www.spamcop.net/ -->

Absolutely nothing to do with SpamCop.net other than this

person copied and then modified the HTML code for the

page layout ... even snagging, copying, and sourcing the

graphic images ....

[SpamCopAdmin]

Kicked an e-mail upstream to advise of some possible legal action by those pesky lawyers ....

Thanks! I sent the info to our legal team.

Not the first time I've seen a site like that. Dunno if it's the same one or not.

- Don -

[DavidT]

The site is still up. I tried calling the phone number on the domain registration and got no answer (big surprise). The site is hosted by an Australian company, but the upstream IP is owned by ISPrime, Inc. in NYC.

DT

[philr]

I've recently been receiving comment spam through the feedback form in my website. Some (perhaps all) of the URLs in these messages are redirected to a website at abusecentral.org which claims to be affiliated with spamcop.net. Is this true, or is the site phishing for something?

Here's a sample of the comment spam:

Hello, nice site look this hmegatest:

<a href=http://www.blogsharing.com/hydrocodoneorde/>Hydrocodone order</a>

<a href=http://buyhydrocodoneonline.forumup.it>Buy hydrocodone online</a>

<a href=http://www.freewebs.com/phentermine-diet/>Phentermine diet</a>

<a href=http://temazepammedicat.forumup.it>Temazepam medication</a>

<a href=http://www.freewebs.com/online-order-phentermine/>Online order

phentermine</a>

<a

href=http://hydrocodonepre.xhostar.com/Hydrocodone_prescription.html>Hydrocodone

prescription</a>

<a href=http://www.freewebs.com/phentermine-diet/>Phentermine diet</a>

<a

href=http://15mgtemazepam.21publish.de/pub/15mgtemazepam/15_mg_temazepam.html>15

mg temazepam</a>

... etc...

[philr]

I've recently been receiving comment spam through the feedback form in my website. Some (perhaps all) of the URLs in these messages are redirected to a website at abusecentral.org which claims to be affiliated with spamcop.net. Is this true, or is the site phishing for something?

Here's a sample of the comment spam:

I just spotted this post which seems to suggest the site is fake. I'm not sure what the spammers are trying to achieve here, but I'll tell the webhost about it anyway.

[Farelf]

I just spotted this post which seems to suggest the site is fake. I'm not sure what the spammers are trying to achieve here, but I'll tell the webhost about it anyway.

Thanks philr, well spotted. Will merge your post with the other shortly.

[Topics merged and philr PM'd]

[Farelf]

Spotted in the NGs, G|_|Y |V|AC0N's link to Spamhuntress blog on redirect to abusecentral: http://spamhuntress.com/2006/08/24/redirect-to-spamcop/