The spammers know they are being disruptive, they just
don't care unless it is their site.
You're probably right a lot of the time, but I'm not sure it's true in every
case. This is what surprised me most when I came across all this information linked off
sickseo .co.uk about how to use "off site SEO" software. It looks like
there's quite a separation between the bad guys who develop this software (and who
also do things like finding lists of vulnerable websites), and then the breed of dumb
"SEO experts" who buy the software and use it to run their
"campaigns". I think the latter could quite easily be unaware that they're
doing something wrong.
We can at
least comment on them and vote them down (Youtube finds quite a lot of similar videos)
Please dont do that. All thats gonna accomplish is that the videos will
rise in the search rankings (yes, even the downrating does that).
Surprised by this. You think if we all go here
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=off+page+seo+yo… and
downvote these videos, google will rank the video higher? Possible I suppose. Anyway
that's not necessarily a big problem. If the video gets attention from more
right-thinking people who will work to combat this, then that's a good thing. Also the
aim would be to provide *some* indication to dumb SEO people, that there are people out
there suffering on the receiving end of these tools, because currently there is no such
indication.
How about
unleashing a bit of "ethical hacking" e.g. DDOS attacks on people distributing
this software?
You can go to jail for that, in a lot of places. Even if they DDoS'd
you first, and you DDoS'd them back, you'd be more likely to go to
jail than them, because being an amateur, you'd be more likely to slip
up in some traceable way.
Well yeah. Partly I was mentioning this just to throw them to the wolves. I appreciate you
don't want to be seen to be recommending breaking the law, but really if you're
reading this and you have a way of disrupting the operations of edwinsoft .com (for
example) legally or illegally you'd be doing the world a favor in my opinion. I
wouldn't attempt anything outright illegal myself, but there's a some interesting
legally grey approaches. Remember "spam vampire" and the lycos antispam
screensaver? Sort of an opt-in DDOS attack.
O'rielly article from way back in 2004:
http://www.oreillynet.com/network/2004/12/03/chongq.html
I like the quote towards the end there: "Using purely defensive means has not worked.
It is like someone throwing punches at you and all you do is hold your arms over your face
to fend off the blows,"
"has not worked" is too strong of course. Defensive means can and do work ok
*if* you know how to set them up, and if you keep checking back to make sure it is
working. On an internet-wide scale, looking across all the mediawiki installs and
attempted mediawiki installs out there, and looking at the experience of new folks trying
install MediaWiki... wiki spam remains a big problem.
Halz