| LED Digest 2614: Evading Spam Harvesters |
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.AudetteMedia.com : the LED's Publisher Boutique Internet Marketing: SEO, SEM, Social Media http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. March 26, 2008 Issue no. 2614 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Anti-spam Company Spamming ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Static vs Dynamic Sites ==-- ~ Robert I. Sadler "...maintain the current URLs of all the pages." ~ Brett Atkin "Dynamically driven pages can easily get indexed..." ~ Michael Tidmore "It is still a great idea to add...static pages to the mix as well." --== Selling Digital Video Downloads ==-- ~ Val Waldeck "I use MyDigitalDispatch to instantly deliver and keep track..." --== Evading Email Harvesters ==-- ~ Will Bontrager "...spammers do not have to use your form to send spam through it." ~ Veronica Yuill "...I use Tectite, which is a robust and very configurable script..." ========= NEW ===================================== <Moderator Comment> I received this funny email today. A LEDer (who would like to remain anonymous) got spammed by a company pushing their anti-spam product. Check it out: ------------------ From: Anonymous Date: March 25, 2008 Subject: Anti-spam Spam "Hilarious. Spamming me to promote their anti-spam product!" -anonymous > Hello, > > I am inquiring on behalf of an anti-spam, > anti-virus, ant-phishing, anti-spyware > service, my name is Lorrie Clark, in charge > of local business operations. > > Our company is located on Vancouver Island > in Langford, & I was wondering how I would > go about contacting someone, with regards > to our anti-spam services. > > I was hoping to talk to someone in person, > so that I may answer any questions / > concerns, with respect to any issues, they > may be having when it comes to email > safety/security. I would also like to drop > off a brochure, so they can have a look at > our services, at their leisure, & contact > us if they feel our service is right for > them. > > Thank you for your time with matter. > > Sincerely, Lorrie Clark Manager Of > Operations scan4spam.com Telephone: > 1.250.598.0058 ------------------ There's a lesson in here somewhere... it's easy to be critical (this is a pretty ironic approach for an anti-spam provider to take), but it's more useful to learn from their mistakes. It's got to be tough entering the anti-spam market... but this isn't the way to do it. - They need internet marketing to pull leads in, so they don't have to push for them with their sales team. - They need a truly exceptional product / service for anyone to care. - They need to appeal to techie geeks who hold the keys to IT and can roll out software add-ons for their companies. - They need competitive pricing and solid support. - They need to build their in-house email list with opt-in subscribers. Then they need to contact them in the right way, with the right message... at the right time. - They need to appeal to the community and open their service to add-ons, custom mods, whatever. What else do they need to do? -Adam ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Robert I. Sadler Subject: Static vs dynamic > We're going to move to a dynamically driven > website. I have heard that it will take > longer to get those pages indexed, and that > the site may not be indexed as fully as a > static site. > > Advice? Warnings? Pitfalls I should know > about? > > Would I be better off to stay with a static > website? Should I do some kind of > combination, keeping static pages for the > terms that the site ranks very well for? - Nancy Schettler, LED 2613 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2028/190/ I believe the most important aspect of this redesign would be to maintain the current URLs of all the pages. This also has the advantage that all new content will have descriptive URLs, instead of the dreaded id equals. Robert I. Sadler -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Brett Atkin Subject: Static vs dynamic Nancy, I say go for it because it will make your life much easier in the long run. It shouldn't take any longer for the pages to get indexed over "static" pages. You will need to be concerned about having a site structure and naming conventions that are search engine friendly. Dynamically driven pages can easily get indexed as long as you don't have pages with URLs like this: http://something.org/ServiceProjects/WorldwideService/tabid/254/Default.aspx The SE's are going to have a difficult time with this page for a variety of reasons. It should be something like this: http://something.org/Service-Projects/world-service.aspx Make sure the shopping cart software doesn't create unnecessary folders, poorly named folders and page names that have a long query strings. You will be starting from scratch from an SEO perspective since all your pages will have new files names. I'm sure there are a number of things you can do with 301 redirects and such to reduce certain issues though. I think something you should consider though is the amount of time it is going to take to get all your data into a database to populate dynamic pages. With over a 1000 pages of content, the time to import will be significant. Good luck. Brett Atkin http://www.BrettAtkin.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Austin-Lloyd Marketing Subject: Static vs dynamic Hello Nancy, I for one believe you should definitely make the jump to dynamic. I own a Web Dev company here in Texas and we build dynamic sites exclusively. You "hit the nail on the head" when you said "Should I do some kind of combination, keeping static pages for the terms.". We develop totally for the LAMP environment (Linux,Apache,MySql and PHP). Every site we do is a dynamic site whether it's a basic CMS site or shopping cart. We did shift gears a few years ago when we found out that Google hated indexing dynamically driven pages that had URL's such as this http://www.yoursite.com/products.php?cat=240. So we began doing what is known as "mod rewrites" on all of our shopping carts that give all pages on the dynamically driven sites URLS such as this http://www.yoursite.com/redsweater.htm This is much more search engine friendly and get's more dynamic pages indexed. It is still a great idea to add many informational static pages to the mix as well, that are "keyword rich" content pages. The great thing about (dynamic) database driven sites is that there are so many additional functions that can be added on that will greatly help you manage and administrate your business. Just to name a couple: 1. Mass product uploads- How nice would it be that every time you needed to add a 100 new products or so, that you just upload a CSV file containing all of them at once with a couple of mouse clicks. 2. How nice would it be for your backend admin panel to actually connect with wholesalers automatically based on certain product orders that needed to be drop shipped etc.? 3. If you have a brick and mortar store to go along with your site; How nice would it be for your Web site to actually "talk" to your POS system and provide real time inventory reporting? That's enough rambling.I guess you figured out that I could go on all day ;-) Anyway, hope this helps! Good luck! Michael Tidmore President Austin-Lloyd Marketing, LLC www.austinlloydmarketing.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Val Waldeck Subject: Digital downloads > So now I want to enter the market of > Digital Downloads, but I have no idea where > to begin... Is there a reliable company who > can do this? - Penny Stewart, LED 2612 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2027/190/ I use MyDigitalDispatch to instantly deliver and keep track of all buyers. Amazing programme and worth every cent. Also use Word to write ebooks and publish them in PDF format. Works well on Amazon and Ebay as well. Hope that's useful. Val Waldeck www.valwaldeck.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Will Bontrager Subject: Harvesters > [regarding flow-to.com harvest-proof email links] > Is it available somewhere for others to use on their sites? - Sheryl Coppenger, LED 2613 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2028/190/ Yes, at http://flow-to.com/ The basic service is free for all who wish to use it - personal, commercial, or otherwise. Expanded or custom service would have initial setup and recurring fees. To LEDers who wish to use the free flow-to service, let me suggest signing up with an email address never used elsewhere, one not easily guessable, and make it exclusive for the flow-to service. A lot can be said about email addresses and their vulnerability. Let me just mention that when an email address gets on spammers' lists, it may be there forever. We have one that got on lists in late 1999. Several times a year, I re-create the address just to see. Every time, the spam continues; a trickle, but still coming. The consternation I've noted in forum posts when someone created a new address and the spam started coming immediately may be because the "new" address was already on spammers' lists from when someone else owned the domain. Therefore, when you sign up with the flow-to service, if you're doing so to protect an email address, be quite certain the address has never been used and is not guessable (something like This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it would be good). Wouldn't it be nice to have at least one email address that doesn't get spam? If you have an honorable hosting company, use the address only for receiving flow-to forwarded email, and never otherwise expose it, the address can remain pristine for years. The flow-to email link provided in the LED is so you can get in touch directly with the author of individual posts. (It looks like an http://... link, which it is. When you click on it, nice things happen - your email program opens, pre-filled with a one-time use email address and a subject line that, when you send it, will forward directly to the author of the post.) And don't be shy about posting. Your email address will not be revealed. Yet, readers *can* write to you directly. > Hopefully nobody's using formmail from Matt's > Script Archives ... Are there any better > alternatives nowadays? Yes. We have some, of course. But we're not the only game in town. See the URL in my sig. Probably all reputable form handling software nowadays has form hijacking protection. By that, I mean exploits that use your software on your server to send spam to hundreds and even many thousands of people by inserting header lines with the destination addresses. If you're unsure about your software, ask the author. Often, it's a relatively easy security fix. In essence, it requires checking for and removing all line feed characters from each header line of the outgoing email. A regex like this may do the trick: /[\n\r]|(?:x|\%)0[ad]|\\0?1[25]/ Then there is automated submission spam. That is when your own forms are used to send spam to you. A fact that some people don't realize is that spammers do not have to use your form to send spam through it. They are interested in your form handling software, not your form. After they have the URL of your form handling software (which their robots are trained to obtain), their spamming software submits to your software as if it came from one of your own forms. Even if you remove your form or decide to use different form handling software, so long as the original form handling software is installed and working, spammers can submit spam to it. There are a number of ways to protect your form and form handling software from spammers. One way is to use the visual CAPTCHA you've undoubtedly see used here an there. That's where you have to type in the answer to a question or the letters in an image to prove you're human. I've never been a fan of that type of CAPTCHA. To me, it is inconsiderate to ask someone to prove they're human before accepting their communication. Our software utilizes JavaScript to help determine whether or not the one using the form or form handling software is human or robot. Human users never have to prove anything, they're spotted for what they are. Auto-submission software and robots are blocked. Although our software is rather sophisticated, until auto-submission software and robots get more sophisticated themselves, simple JavaScript can thwart them. Something as simple as a fake action= URL that is corrected when the form loads in a JavaScript-enabled browser might work for years. Robots see the fake URL. Browsers replace the fake with the real. Hold on a moment, looks like I got carried away with this tome. Adam, feel free to cut out huge chunks. Will Bontrager http://www.willmaster.com/software/ <Moderator Comment> This is a fantastic post, I wouldn't change a thing. Very interesting info. Thanks Will. -adam -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Veronica Yuill Subject: Harvesters > For the new LEDers among us, Sheryl ranks > right up there with the oldest of the > old-school on the LED. - Moderator Comment I'm glad to see you back on the list too, Sheryl -- I always valued your posts! Re FormMail scripts: nowadays if a client wants a simple contact form, I use Tectite, which is a robust and very configurable script, with lots more features than Matt's old formmail. Requires PHP: http://www.tectite.com/ And thank you Adam, for your link-building article! I've just had a client repeatedly suggest we should add a link page to her site filled with links to spammy sites who send her link exchange requests, because she thinks it will give her a magical boost in the SEs :-( This should be good ammunition! PS Adam, I've become a lurker too lately, due to lack of time to post, and lack of expertise on the subjects addressed :-) But give me a techie question and I'm happy! Regards Veronica Yuill www.larecettedujour.org/ (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Don't ask questions of fairy tales." - Jewish Folk Saying |
