Topics: Digital Life

Spammers Trying To Do To Blogs What They Did To E-Mail

Posted by Mike Elgan, Jul 19, 2006 08:50 AM

Blog comment spam -- advertising slipped into the "comments" section of blog entries -- has been around awhile. It tends to trickle in. Various schemes exist to combat it, but most blogs are completely unprotected.

Though the mainstream press hasn't noticed, there was a radical increase in spam over the weekend. Who's doing it? And why the sudden increase?

I asked blog-owning visitors to my personal blog, The Raw Feed, to comment on whether or not they experienced a sudden rise in comment spam, and all who posted comments said they had.

A blogger with a very popular tech blog said spam attempts jumped from 800-1200 per day to more than 4,000 on Sunday alone. Other sites are showing big jumps as well.

My guess is that some blog spammer out there has been innovating new ways to automate attempts to post blog spam, and has figured out how to be far more prolific than anyone has previously been able to do. And if one spammer has a new, highly effective technique, then dozens, then hundreds, of other bloggers soon will as well. If that's the case, it's bad news for bloggers and good news for the companies such as Microsoft and others who make software to protect against comment spam.

But it's just a guess.

I'm also guessing that blog comment spam is about to become a huge problem, forcing a new arms race between spammers and bloggers and making blog comments less appealing.

« Microsoft Makes Its Peace With Open Source | Main | Daily News Podcast For Wednesday, July 19, 2006 »

This is a public forum. United Business Media and its affiliates are not responsible for and do not control what is posted herein. United Business Media makes no warranties or guarantees concerning any advice dispensed by its staff members or readers.

Community standards in this comment area do not permit hate language, excessive profanity, or other patently offensive language. Please be aware that all information posted to this comment area becomes the property of United Business Media LLC and may be edited and republished in print or electronic format as outlined in United Business Media's Terms of Service.

Important Note: This comment area is NOT intended for commercial messages or solicitations of business.

Digital Life Video

Blog Categories
Healthcare Cloud Computing Enterprise 2.0 Digital Life Grok On Google Over The Air Outsourcing Global CIO Startup City Information Management Content Management Green Computing Full Nelson Unified Communications	Hardware Government IT Analytics Tech Stocks Interop Security Microsoft Apple Unvarnished Open Source Wolfe's Den David Berlind's Tech Radar Virtualization Storage Backup and Business Continuity
Blog Homepage