| LED Digest 2122: Dealing with Blog Spam |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. March 22, 2006 Issue #2122 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Dealing with Blog Spam ==-- ~ Joanne Glasspoole "Does anyone know how to combat [this]?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== To Bounce or Not To Bounce ==-- ~ John Quinlan "[Bluesecurity] have a league table of who is reporting the most spam..." ~ Tom Aman "The 'From' in spam is often faked." --== And Now For... Paperwork ==-- ~ Vicki Lambert "Are you sure about the keeping the paper for 3 years?" --== Email List Services or Software ==-- ~ Martha Retallick "Count me as a happy Campaign Monitor customer." --== Outsourcing ==-- ~ Marty R. Milette "Bangalore seems to be the 'Silicon Valley' of India..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Have I Been Scammed? ==-- ~ Phil Chave ~ Doug Stewart ~ Michael Linehan --== Reciprocal Linking ==-- ~ Michael Martinez =========== NEW ================================== From: Joanne Glasspoole Subject: Blog Spam Recently my client started using B2Evolution for her blog. She is spending about half an hour to 45 minutes every day deleting bogus comments / links to online pharmacies / porn / ring tones... She is blacklisting offensive referrer links, but, of course, she is overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. Does anyone know how to combat SPAM blog? Is there a module we should add to B2Evolution to help eliminate this problem? Does any know what google.com/url164 is? Joanne Glasspoole Glasspoole Web Development http://www.glasspoole.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: John Quinlan Subject: Bouncing > We all get spammed, some worse than others. On > a slow day I get 10,000, on a busy day, it hits almost > 20,000... Should I start bouncing these e-mails...? - Scott Marino, LED 2121 I also get thousands of pieces of garbage -- I do have the advantage however of running my own mail servers. I signed up with a website http://bluesecurity.com and I really don't know how successful they are at getting my email addresses off of the spammer's lists, given that they swap and sell to each other, but I do however now have somewhere to forward the spam to. I have a catchall email account that just forwards all messages sent to fictitious addresses to them, they then report them to the ISP of the company that employs the spammers. The spammers are professional and will not stop, but if the company pushing the products or services lose their Internet account that will hurt. Who knows this may even help to kill it off altogether. They have a league table of who is reporting the most spam, and when I signed up with them I was ranked after a week in the 800's, within six weeks I was in the 40's but I got fed up with checking because it's the only thing I know where to win, is to lose. Happy hunting John Quinlan, CEO Sioli.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Bouncing 1. The "From" in spam is often faked. Yes, if you can be reasonably sure that the "From" or "Reply-to: is not faked, start bouncing them. It may take some time (months) for bouncing them to have an effect, but eventually it will. By not bouncing them, you are giving the spammer the impression that maybe these are good addresses. 2. If you can figure out the email headers (sometimes hard to do) or can find someone to interpret them for you, you can find out where the email originates, then use a site like http://www.dnsstuff.com/ to to do a Whois lookup. This will sometimes give you email addresses of the sender's ISP so you can send complaints about the abuse to that address. Since many sites (my own included) are hosted by a hosting company, it can sometimes take a little digging to get back to the real owner of the offending IP address(es). 3. And the one thing you should do for sure is to report this spam to the FTC. Go to http://www.ftc.gov and click on the "File a Complaint" link. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Vicki Lambert Subject: Paperwork > Just wondering what other folks out there are doing > about all the paperwork that their business generates. > We have to keep the papers for three years... - Nancy Schettler, LED 2120 Are you sure about the keeping the paper for 3 years? I am in the payroll field and for payroll records, tax reports etc the IRS allows electronic storage as long as it is an exact replica and has the signature etc. The IRS only needs to be sure that the records are the same and that it can be printed out if requested. Perhaps you need to check the rules for your states. Since the electronic act passed a while back electronic records are supposed to be accepted the same as paper so maybe your state has changed. And since banks keep your checks on file as electronic files maybe you can do the same type of record for the credit card companies. Be worth checking into. Vicki Lambert -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Martha Retallick Subject: Email lists > ... I need to be able to upload a list of emails, the content > of which may change slightly each month as [newsletter] > members enter and leave... - Tom Connelly, LED 2119 Permit me to recommend: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/ You can use it to send anything from plain-Jane text e-mails to those fancy HTML e-mails. Count me as a happy Campaign Monitor customer. Martha Retallick Western Sky Communications Web/Graphic Design & Consulting http://www.westernskycommunications.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Marty R. Milette Subject: Outsourcing Alex [Hughart, LED 2119] is 100% right on the money when he states, > Paying workers in some dumpy sweatshop $10 per month, making > them work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week and using child labor can > be called by all means 'corporate greed', if not immoral and > criminal. I don't think there can be ANY argument that SOME forms of offshore outsourcing ARE little more than criminal greed -- but we must remember that this is typically the case with manufacturing of consumer goods rather than 'knowledge-work'. Bangalore seems to be the "Silicon Valley" of India -- where life is VERY VERY GOOD for the majority of people AND the costs of living are so low that the $10 or $20 per hour you pay them can provide the same lifestyle (or even better) than the $80 to $100 per hour you'd need to pay a Southern California worker for the same work. Knowledge workers in India have no shortage of excellent jobs to look forward to -- their most challenging problem seems to be selecting which employer they want to work for. I can tell you that NONE of the companies or workers I have used is any kind of 'sweatshop' -- in fact, this is sometimes a problem when I need people to work weekends or after hours. In the 'good old days' of offshore outsourcing, foreign developers were 'hungry' enough to to work extended hours for very little -- but times change and prices have doubled or tripled and workers are becoming much more demanding of their free time. (This is a GOOD thing -- right?) We shouldn't knock Indians or other foreign countries whose governments recognized the potential of their workforce more than 20 years ago, and started DOING what it takes to 'tool-up' their future workforce. (Something many other countries failed miserably to duplicate.) Check out the Bangalore University: http://www.bangalore.iipm.edu/index.html -- and have a look at some of the others. Graduates of these universities ain't working for $10 per month in any kind of sweatshop you can be sure. Interestingly enough, several years back I did a training course for an American company in Albany, New York... The class had to be held on weekends and evenings so that the students didn't lose one second of 'billable time'. Lunch (provided by the company) was plain Pizza (cheese only) and sodas - barely enough to go around. Guess who the students were? 20 Indian developers brought to the USA on H1-B visas. The US company would work them for up to 2 years at minimum wage, pull their support, send them home and replace them with new ones. I'm sure this company's customers thought they were "Buying American" too... Marty R. Milette mmilette, gmail.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Phil Chave Subject: Scam > I went ahead and bought the mentoring package to the > tune of $3,000.00, assuming that this was a legitimate > upsell... Have I just done something remarkably stupid? - Bev Hanna, LED 2121 Hi Bev I don't know all the rules about distance selling, but don't you have a certain amount of time to change your mind? In the UK I think it's around 14 days. Pressure sales over the phone are covered by these rules, I'm fairly sure. The first course of action has got to be to get in touch with your credit card company, if this is how you paid. Trading standards may be able to help. But do it Now. Hopefully, somebody who knows the rules of law for sure will also write in. Good luck. Phil Chave www.distanthealer.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Doug Stewart Subject: Scam Bev wrote: > Does anyone know anything about Empire Marketing, Shanklin > Group International or ESM (Educational Sales and Marketing)? - Bev Hanna, LED 2121 I just Googled a couple of the names above and found this forum discussion thread: http://www.howtocorp.com/cgi-bin/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/12764 It looks like this company scammed several people for thousands of dollars each. So you aren't alone. One of the posts claim they got their money back. Good luck. Doug Stewart DSC Web Services, Inc. http://www.dsc-webservices.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Scam Hi Bev, Sorry. Yes. You got scammed. If you want to know how thoroughly and horribly, check: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff154688.htm http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/1/477.html?1098982291 http://www.auctionhints.com/message/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/5808 It's an MLM scam with many of the characteristics of a cult. Stay away from these people, or you stand to lose a lot more than $3,000. For anyone else at any time in the future, you can easily get information on the Web. My first search plus a minute or two looking through the first page provided these references. Of course, if there are no negative references, it doesn't mean everything is OK - we still need to use other information, intuition, comparison to other scams and analysis. But if a first search throws up a pile of negatives, something is seriously wrong. Check first. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: SEO Linking Myths > I simply do not agree with Michael Martinez's assertion > that link building is a waste of time (please don't tell me > I'm putting words in his mouth - he has stated this many > times in LED) - Steve Pronger, LED 2117 I've never said any such thing either on LED Digest or elsewhere. Google confirms I've never posted any such comment to LED Digest: http://snipurl.com/nyai [google.com] What I have often said is that every site needs links and that most sites don't need continual link building. Also, on many occasions after finding specific sites had hundreds of links already, I have pointed out that additional link building won't help sites with poor rankings. In LED Digest 2118 Dirk Johnson took a "new approach" and wrote: > I'll try to avoid direct exchanges with others who > have posted, and talk in general terms. And a little later he added: ------------------- "There are those in the SEO world who would dismiss this rather substantial community of cooperative, reciprocating sites as being misguided, and following some kind of outdated, pack-mentality, or whatever. ... "Many of them have repeatedly published misguided, unfounded statements about reciprocal linking over the years, and some of it is has been outright absurd with it's failure to hold up to scrutiny. It is obvious to me that many of them have very little real experience with the practice, or they no longer do. ..." ------------------- He argues that "good SEOs" all "get" reciprocal linking and do it every day and speak highly of it. Well, Matt Cutts from Google has a few things to say about reciprocal linking: ------------------- "The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails -- the best links are earned and given by choice. When I recap SES from my viewpoint, I'll give some examples of great ways to earn links." http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-link-exchange-emails/ "The main point I want to get across is that in 1-2 minutes, it was easy to tell whether a site was (over)doing reciprocal links or trying to buy links." http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/tell-me-about-your-backlinks/ ------------------- So, you can reciprocal link, but you can overdo it. You can overdo all linking. SEO is not about exchanging links, buying links, or building linkage at all. SEO is about getting the best possible placement for your relevant content. Sometimes, the other guy really does have more relevant content. It's true that you can bulldoze your way to the top through a large number of links. That is called link-bombing, not search engine optimization. It's true that a handful of industries such as real estate have become so competitive that all the top players indulge in excessive link building. That is a self-defeating strategy, not search engine optimization. Every Web site needs links. But many highly ranked sites get by with far fewer links than their competition. And now Google has devalued many paid and reciprocal links. People have said on several SEO forums that many links Google ignores still work for Yahoo! and MSN. No one knows if that will always be the case. When it comes to link building, since most people are concerned with their Google rankings, let me reiterate some age-old, general-purpose advice: caveat emptor. Buyer beware. Reciprocal linking and paid linking produce unnatural link relationships and these practices entail some risk. Understand when you do these things that they may be effective only for a while or they may be ineffective. The truth is that you will never know for sure because there is no accurate method for measuring how much links help or hurt. There are people who claim to measure the impact of linkage on search results, but I have never seen any credible analyses. Not one. Michael Martinez ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains © Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. "The strongest of all warriors are these two - Time and Patience." - Leo Tolstoy |
