Jonathan Bailey's site, Plagiarism Today, appears to have had a few problems with his previous host. Jonathan's story just shows the extreme importance of keeping a complete backup of one's online data and website. He also points us to a great idea of using CSS as a method of combating content thieves.
Recently in Splogs Category
A few days ago, I wrote about a splog over on wordpress.com that I had reported a number of times that, after a pair of "Report as Spam" and a support ticket still remained online. It took three hours after blogging about it but it finally came down.
Folks have written that wordpress.com is as spam free as possible. In fact, Matt Mullenweg recently commented that they've removed over 800,000 such sites from the service, 24% of all blogs created on that site. (I agree with the commenter. The math is off.) That number seems rather low to me considering that numbers between 50% and 77% get used all the time.
I've questioned this in the past a number of times as it really sounds like PR coming from Automattic. (And if you haven't figured out yet that anything coming from Automattic should be questioned, you may want to give that some thought.) Simply going around the site with their Next Blog link in the admin bar will usually show a number of splogs. I've always reported them in the past.
Here's something else I've been doing. I've bookmarked every splog reported since the middle of January, 2008. I have a list of 917 splogs located on wordpress.com that, having just checked a large random sample of them, appear to be mostly still on line. Nearly a thousand. You would think that a site that's going around and stating how anti-spam they are would have deleted them a long time ago. Guess not.
Here's a sampling from that list. These are 70 that were reported this past weekend that as far as I can tell are still online as of today. They've all been marked with nofollow and noindex so they won't get any credit from me.
I wonder how long it'll take for someone to catch up on these. I also wonder what the problem is this time.
edit: Here's another one.
Folks have written that wordpress.com is as spam free as possible. In fact, Matt Mullenweg recently commented that they've removed over 800,000 such sites from the service, 24% of all blogs created on that site. (I agree with the commenter. The math is off.) That number seems rather low to me considering that numbers between 50% and 77% get used all the time.
I've questioned this in the past a number of times as it really sounds like PR coming from Automattic. (And if you haven't figured out yet that anything coming from Automattic should be questioned, you may want to give that some thought.) Simply going around the site with their Next Blog link in the admin bar will usually show a number of splogs. I've always reported them in the past.
Here's something else I've been doing. I've bookmarked every splog reported since the middle of January, 2008. I have a list of 917 splogs located on wordpress.com that, having just checked a large random sample of them, appear to be mostly still on line. Nearly a thousand. You would think that a site that's going around and stating how anti-spam they are would have deleted them a long time ago. Guess not.
Here's a sampling from that list. These are 70 that were reported this past weekend that as far as I can tell are still online as of today. They've all been marked with nofollow and noindex so they won't get any credit from me.
I wonder how long it'll take for someone to catch up on these. I also wonder what the problem is this time.
edit: Here's another one.
Continue reading Looks like Wordpress.com has gone pro-spam.
Say hello to Poker 101. I don't normally link to sites filled with affiliate links and the like (At least I try not to.) but I'm making a big deal about this for one very good reason.
It's still there.
You see, a couple of months back, I noticed (see the comments section) that sometimes I had to resend spam reports into wordpress.com when they didn't get acted upon them. Now, I know it's only Mark over there dealing with those reports (Lloyd used to do them as well but I noted that he got removed from that position. At least he's no longer following up on reports any more.) but after two reports sent in previously, (and a third one in today) the site is still there.
- Affiliate links? Check
- Adverts? Check
- Content stealing? Maybe. Copied at least.
This isn't the first time I've seen this either. This guy had his sites up for more than a week after first questioning what the issue was.
Sure, maybe wordpress.com has a public face of being anti-splog. We all know that previous experience shows otherwise.
It's still there.
You see, a couple of months back, I noticed (see the comments section) that sometimes I had to resend spam reports into wordpress.com when they didn't get acted upon them. Now, I know it's only Mark over there dealing with those reports (Lloyd used to do them as well but I noted that he got removed from that position. At least he's no longer following up on reports any more.) but after two reports sent in previously, (and a third one in today) the site is still there.
- Affiliate links? Check
- Adverts? Check
- Content stealing? Maybe. Copied at least.
This isn't the first time I've seen this either. This guy had his sites up for more than a week after first questioning what the issue was.
Sure, maybe wordpress.com has a public face of being anti-splog. We all know that previous experience shows otherwise.
I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of Blogger but tonight I have to give them a pat on the back. I just read on Mediamax's new blog that their old blog has been labeled a splog and they no longer have access to it.
Why do I get the feeling that somewhere out there, a Blogger employee with a free or low end account on Mediamax recently got an email from Mediamax telling them about their upcoming changes and how they either had to upgrade to a pay account or lose all of the data? I have to admit that even I would have a hard time not pushing that button if I was sitting there looking at gigs of files, not being able to retrieve them, knowing that they'll be deleted in a few days, and knowing that Mediamax could really care less. That's what they did it me.
Way to go, Blogger. Now if you could just go ahead and mark their new blog...
Edit: Want to see something really stupid? I just realized that they signed up for the same service that previously marked them as a spammer. I guess they didn't take the hint.
Why do I get the feeling that somewhere out there, a Blogger employee with a free or low end account on Mediamax recently got an email from Mediamax telling them about their upcoming changes and how they either had to upgrade to a pay account or lose all of the data? I have to admit that even I would have a hard time not pushing that button if I was sitting there looking at gigs of files, not being able to retrieve them, knowing that they'll be deleted in a few days, and knowing that Mediamax could really care less. That's what they did it me.
Way to go, Blogger. Now if you could just go ahead and mark their new blog...
Edit: Want to see something really stupid? I just realized that they signed up for the same service that previously marked them as a spammer. I guess they didn't take the hint.
I love it when a spammer gets caught. :)
lampany13.org
A quick nod of thanks to bestfreehost.org.
It's been discovered that bitacle.org has been stealing the entire content of some blogs, repackaging it, crediting it as their own, relicensing it under Creative Commons and offering it on their own site which is filled with adverts. This is a method of banning these idiots.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
It appears someone has figured out how to automate the sign up procedure here at WordPress.com. Seems like nothing but splogs coming across the bottom of my dashboard. I've gone ahead and reported almost 20 of them so far this morning. No idea how many went by me.
Boy, I bet Donncha O Caoimh is going to hate my guts in a few minutes.
-drmike
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