Push Button Marketing 101
Comment spam isn’t something I get extremely worked up about. I just look at it as a by-product of the environment we exist in. Until search engines can get past "the person with the most links wins" comment spam will be around.
That said, I fully understand that my point of view is probably part of the minority. There is a huge segment of the blogging world that devotes a great deal of time and energy to fighting the war against comment spam. Unfortunately, many of the rank and file soldiers are pretty clueless when it comes to understanding how it really works.
On the other hand, most push button marketers are extremely tech savvy. The time and resources they put into their systems makes it very difficult to slow them down, and almost impossible to identify.
However, like any segment of our population, there will always be some idiots who have no clue what they are doing. And those idiots can be identified if you know what to look for.
Here’s a good example:
Name: Voyeur
E-mail: jkj34e@mail.com
URI: http://p097.ezboard.com/bvoyeur
IP: 203.115.1.134 |
Date: February 9, 2006
Comment:
Voyeur
Voyeur Web
Project Voyeur
Private Voyeur
Free Project Voyeur
Free Voyeur
True Voyeur
Adult Amateur Voyeur XXX
Free Voyeur Web
Russian Voyeur
Adult Amateur Voyeur XXX
Voyeur
Voyeur Web
Project Voyeur
Provate Voyeur
This person has been hitting me on a regular basis. His/her IP is an anonymous proxy in Sri Lanka. There really isn’t much to go on using traditional log data. But what this knucklehead doesn’t understand is that not all anonymous proxies are the same. Competent push button marketers only use what are commonly referred to as elite proxies. It is very difficult to get an elite proxy to give up the user’s IP. But non-elite proxies are a whole different story. They will rat out the user, if you know the right questions to ask.
Unfortunately, most web servers aren’t configured to ask the right questions. So those who aren’t smart enough to test their proxies are rarely outed. But my server isn’t your average server. Techno tracking is something we spend a lot of time on. That means we ask a lot of questions and log a lot of information.
Here is a sample of some of our info on my Sri Lanka buddy:
UserID: 21435
Time: 06:04:13 02/10/06
IP: 203.115.1.134
Country: Sri Lanka
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows 98; QXW0332q)
Java Enabled: No
Cookies Enabled: No
URL Requested: affiliate-marketing.webguerrilla.com/seo-friendly-affiliate-systems/
Referring URL: http://www.webguerrilla.com/affiliate-marketing/seo-friendly-affiliate-systems
Proxy Info:
HTTP_PRAGMA: no-cache
HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR:
207.226.162.178
Because he/she didn’t use an elite proxy, we were able to get the original IP. All we had to do was ask for it. And it turns out that 207.226.162.178 belongs to BTN Access in Reston Va. They are a broadband provider. I’d be willing to bet this is the static IP of a home dsl connection.
Now, I can at least send and email to abuse@btnaccess.com letting them know that they might have someone on their network running a blog spamming tool. They might not care, but at least I get to feel like I tried. And who knows? If this person hit some of my readers as well, they might send and email too.
Comments
7 Responses to “ Push Button Marketing 101 ”
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What’s the difference between an elite proxy and a high annonimity proxy?
What blog spaming tools would you recommend? How does the workflow usually work? Is this a bit like using automated link tools where a tool does the digging and generates a list of spammable blogs but it’s best if a person finishes the job? What are the best techniques to spam a Blog without the blogger deleting your comments?
graywolf — elite proxies and high anonymity are generally referring to the same thing.
There are three levels of proxy anonymity - low or transparent, which will reveal the end-user IP address if the “right questions are asked.”
An (level 2) anonymous proxy will tell you that access is coming from a proxy but won’t reveal the end-user IP address directly.
An elite proxy would be the cream of the crop — not only does it not reveal the end user’s IP address, it doesn’t readily identify as a proxy.
Why do they bother with the blogspam?
Surely it is not beyond the wit of Matt Cutts et al to simply ignore any link in blog comments just as with guest books.
Surely you flag your site as being spammy and who wants to be looked at ?
Intersting stuff. I keep getting these strange ones that are putting major news sites in the comments field, Is this someone trying to dirty their name? Do people go this far with this stuff? When I hit “spam” in admin. in wordpress what happens to the spammers comments, are they just deleted, I would like to take a look at them again. Thanks
I actually quite liked blogspam. I find it is a great source of new industries.
Course, after a few years of it, I’m in the process of moving my blog to EE.
$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] and a little regex when you are checking your proxies.
Phantombookman, remember, there are two other engines!