A live “Spam Zeitgeist” meter on Akismet.com shows that a whopping 89% of all blog comments are spam. Akismet, along with the newer TypePad AntiSpam are two of the major tools (both free for personal blogs) available for use against blog comment spam. If Akismet’s 89% figure is anywhere near accurate, it seems that utilizing these blog comment spam blockers should be a no-brainer.
Still, other forms of spam are alive and well. This should not be a surprise to no one, but some of the growth that specific forms of spam are experiencing is alarming.
Cybersquatting, which is basically the “registration of domain names containing a brand, slogan or trademark to which the registrant has no right,” according to MarkMonitor, occurred 402,882 times each week during the first quarter of 2008. This reflected a 40% increase from the previous quarter.
Other forms of brand abuse, including false association, pay-per-click, e-commerce sites, domain kiting, and offensive content were all prevalent in MarkMonitor’s recent observations.
Users looking into travel sites and services saw a flurry of fraudulent attacks, including the sale of vouchers that were irredeemable with the actual airlines shown on them.
Sources:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/06/
can_the_spam.html
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3629828
Jason Hahn
e: jhahn221@gmail.com
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