rc3.org Rafe Colburn on software development (and other topics)

Posts Tagged ‘spam’

Google acknowledges content farms are a problem

In Commentary on 21 January 2011 tagged Google, spam with 5 comments

Google has announced they’re going to more aggressively take on content farmers:

As ‘pure webspam’ has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to ‘content farms,’ which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content.

It’s good to be reminded that content farming is a reaction to search engines getting better at filtering out pure spam.

Google SearchWiki

In Commentary on 21 November 2008 tagged Google, spam with 3 comments

Lauren Weinstein considers the likelihood of success of Google’s new SearchWiki feature. Here’s the official announcement from the Google blog. The basic idea is that users will be able to provide feedback on search results, ranking them up or down in the list and entering comments on them.

It’ll be interesting to see whether spam and other forms of abuse render this feature useless. I can see the black hat SEOs burning the midnight oil this weekend to figure out how to exploit this feature.

Email is dead

In Commentary on 21 August 2008 tagged email, spam with no comments

More evidence that email is dead: automatic replies sent to the forged from address on incoming spam like the one below.

Links for April 8

In Commentary on 8 April 2008 tagged blogs, food, Google, hosting, links, media, politics, Python, scalability, security, spam, sports, TV, Web development, WordPress with no comments

• gourmet.com: Betting the Farm. Great article on agriculture policy and how one family farm in South Dakota is bucking the trend of cashing in on ethanol money and government subsidies.
• Rogers Cadenhead: Washington Post Wins Another Phony Pulitzer. I loved the Washington Post article about the violinist planted in the DC subway, but Rogers argues that it’s more reality TV than news reporting.
• Ian Kallen: The WordPress Security Cancer. Outdated WordPress installations are being exploited to distribute spam. If you run it, be sure to keep your installation up to date.
• Dave Winer: Early notes on GoogleApps (Scripting News). I have my own thoughts on this but I haven’t gotten around to posting them.
• Ars Technica: Gmail being throttled, blocked by some anti-spam vendors. Now that Google’s CAPTCHA has been cracked, spammers are using bots to sign up for accounts and sending spam through Gmail.
• Freedom to Tinker: Phorm’s Harms Extend Beyond Privacy. Smart take on the many ways the Phorm Internet snooping scheme was hostile to users.
• 2008 NFL Mock Draft Database. I’m a sucker for mock drafts, and this site lists them all.
• FP Passport: The Colbert bump is real. Democratic Congressmen who take their lumps in “Better Know a District” are rewarded with a big jump in contributions.