I have an admission to make: I don’t like comment spam. You are comment spammers. Our readers don’t like you. I don’t like you. You’re not welcome here.

Our Akismet filter has been doing a good job of filtering out spam and our commenting filters within Disqus catch most of the non-automated spammy comments. But they still persist. Most people active online have real names (obvious I know, but stay with me). If they don’t use their real name, it’s popular to use a “handle”.   I can see that it might be reasonable for some people to have a few different handles, but for the most part, singular identities are the norm.

Where the “identity crisis” comes is the persistent and pervasive use of what I consider, spammy handles in blog comments. Doing this is as old as blogging itself.   It started with legitimate beginnings though. For example, I used to put “toprank” in the name field when making comments on other blogs since that’s my handle. Today, I just use my own name.  Apparently, there are a large number of people named, “internet marketing minneapolis” or “insurance leads”. I don’t think so.

We “no follow links” within our blog comments due to abuse by SEO spammy types. Actually, most of them are not professional SEO’s at all. Pro SEO’s would not be so obvious and stupid as to blatantly use keywords as a person’s name when the links are no followed. It’s a waste of time.

So, to “internet marketing india” and “buy viagra and ciallis here”, I’m pretty sure those aren’t your names or your handles. My position with this blog is that if you opt NOT to identify yourself as a person, then the comment has no place here.

My preference is for readers to use real names. When people do that, their comments also tend to be more thoughtful, intelligent and useful to other readers. Additionally, when people use a handle or nickname to reference themselves online, it’s usually a good comment. However, with the popularity of Twitter, most people use their Twitter handle which is often a one-word name anyway.

I simply draw the line with people (or bots) that insist on using keywords they want to rank for in search engines as their “Name” in our blog comments.  Same goes for those that decide to use a two word name that then decide to link to a sales letter for some kind of “automate all your online marketing” software.

We’ve published a blog comment policy several years ago, but after adding Disqus as our comment management system, we cannot link to it in the same way. However, there should be a link at the end of each blog post now so readers can our guidelines for commenting.

After blogging for 6 years, I’m not ambiguous in my thinking about this. I’d be curious to know if readers think this is extreme, but I have no problem saying that I’m pretty firm in this policy and not buying in to the argument that there’s an implied reciprocation that should happen when people comment that involves a keyword link in exchange.

If you’re a long time blogger, what decisions have you made about a blog comment policy?

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Black hat SEOs have managed to get malicious sites ranking for terms like “apple ipad rumor” and “apple tablet” across Google and other search engines. When users visit this site, they are prompted to download some software which can infect their machines.

Here’s a Google screenshot showing the malicious results from Symantec:

Black Hat spammers typically follow hot news items to try and get people clicking through to their sites. Google usually acts quickly to block these sites from appearing, but constant new attacks and domain changes by the spammers mean it’s tough to wipe out all together.

Symantec is warning users to look at “iPad” results carefully and only visit trusted news sites and know information sources.

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I had a lot of fun applying my own fuzzy math to a number of the startling statistics.

For example, the number of email users grew 100 million in 2009, to 1.4 billion worldwide. During the same period, email spam increased by 24%, with 81% of all emails being spam.

Now, I know that you can’t assume that 81% of new email users were spammers–one spammer could account for 1% of spam, all on their lonesome–but that just takes away all of the fun!

Another interesting observation. While Flickr is thought of as being the top image hosting site–with 4 billion images hosted–Facebook users upload more pics in a two-month span, than hosted by Flickr–about 2.5 billion per month.

And, just in case you thought the web-world rotated around North America, here’s a reason why you may want to provide language translation on your site:

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There were fifteen pieces of software tested, and two new types of spam were added to the fold. First, image spam which tested emails containing at least one image. Second, ‘large spam’ which consisted of emails exceeding 50,000 bytes. The large spam emails have been notorious for slipping through the cracks.

Virus Bulletin included a statement in the online publication, concerning Sunbelt, “Over the past few years, Sunbelt has become a big name in the world of computer security…the product certainly has a good spam catch rate and won a VBSpam award with relative ease.”

It’s rather impressive that a newcomer to the review was able to walk away with top honors, especially going up against fourteen other competitors. Here’s what Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Software had to say, “According to Virus Bulletin, the past decade has been defined by the emergence of spam as a malicious criminal activity that is showing no signs of dissipating, thus validating the industry’s need for superior products that combat this growing threat.” He continues, “VIPRE’s superb results in its first Virus Bulletin anti-spam test validate the product’s reliability and performance in protecting end users’ inboxes.”

VIPRE Email Security retails for $40.69 for a 1 year subscription, and provides a slew of options to its users. They claim the software acts as a comprehensive package which monitors various aspects of malicious spam. If you’re an Exchange user, there’s options available to integrate VIPRE Email Security directly into your Exchange network. You can find further details on it’s product page. It will be interesting to see if they can defend their award the next time a review surfaces.

Unfortunately, incredibly, in some industries, the answer is yes. As MediaPost reports, a small study showed that even recipients without weight issues opened and purchased from spam weight loss emails, as published in the Southern Medical Journal this month.

Though the sample size was only 200 (and probably not representative—students at a single New York commuter college), the findings are startling: 18% of those without weight issues opened the spam emails and 5% actually purchased. Of those who identified themselves as having weight issues, 40% opened the spam and 18% purchased.

MediaPost clarifies that these numbers aren’t necessarily great on their own: “The study does note that the purchasing behavior is at a lesser level than a six-country survey for any health or pharmaceutical product.” However, the fact that even those outside the target audience opened and bought from a spam email is pretty significant.

MediaPost also notes that the emails appeal to a “captive, maybe even desperate audience” (and if you’ve ever really battled your weight, you know that feeling), so these findings probably won’t apply across the board. And given that one out of twenty non-target audience members also purchased, suddenly I’ve lost hope that those dozen daily Viagra ads will go away.

What do you think? Is the study skewed? Or is spam really that effective (for some products)?

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It was breathtakingly clear that the secret to success was blatant black hat spamming techniques. This wasn’t some kind of borderline “it depends on how you interpret it” situation. No, BigCo was being assisted by companies paying for links and even posting references of other companies it had “helped” right on its website. At this point, I knew what I had to do.

My client, who worked in the TinyProduct Division of BigCo, listened impassively as I recited all the problem areas that I had found and made sure that the impact on BigCo’s search marketing was understood. I expected my client to spring into action, but instead, the response was closer to, “That’s a shame. It really seems like that stuff is working for them.”

Clearly I had my work cut out for me here. I tried again to explain the dangers of spam—how the moment the search engines detect any spam techniques, BigCo runs the risk of losing everything it has worked so hard to achieve in its search program. Not to mention the embarrassment that the bad publicity could cause (anyone remember the big headlines when BMW was banned by Google?)

My arguments seemed to be working. My client realized that there was too much risk here to pursue these kinds of tactics. So, I asked how I could be of help in working with the BigCo’s offending division, and was told that no help was needed. “So, you can get this stopped on your own?” I asked.

“It’s really none of my business,” my client replied.

Uh oh. I was running into one of the biggest problems in large companies today, the “not my job” syndrome. It’s natural, actually. I mean, human beings really weren’t built for organizations as large as a Fortune 500 company. Our tribal instincts force us to identify with a smaller group than that.

The problem is that we are challenged by these large organizations to outstrip what our instincts have prepared us for. I know it’s hard. I know that it doesn’t feel natural. Or normal. But we have to help our entire company, no matter how big it is, to succeed.

It feels overwhelming at times. I mean, how can any one person make the difference in an organization of thousands of people. It’s understandable—no, it’s inevitable—that we retreat from that kind of awesome responsibility. Unfortunately, that retreat is what all of the other employees in BigCo are doing, too. And when they do, we end up in this difficult situation where someone knows what’s wrong, but is actively deciding not to do anything about it. And no one else does anything about it, either.

The problem with all of this, to bring us back to our original problem, is that Google will do something about it. No, maybe not today, but someday. Someday, Google will figure out what’s going on. Someday Google will identify exactly what kind of trickery is afoot here. And when they do, it won’t be pretty.

Because, you see, Google doesn’t really care which division of BigCo was the offender. Google really isn’t interested in whether your division was at fault or not. BigCo gets penalized, across the board. So, one dopey decision by one person at BigCo can bring down the whole company. And, though it seems collegial to allow freedom of action on the part of your fellow employees, what they do affects you and your little tribe, not just some abstract corporation.

And if this was only about spam, maybe it wouldn’t be that important. I mean, even the cautionary tale of BMW’s spamming ended happily. They weren’t banned very long. It really didn’t turn out to be that big a deal.

No, the bigger problem is the way that we all perform this kind of mental gymnastics in our big companies every day, not just when it comes to search, but when it comes to our customers. We look the other way when BigProduct Division screws our customers, because we are not responsible for what they do—we can only control what we do in TinyProducts.

But, in the end, it doesn’t work out that way. Because everything anyone does at BigCo reflects on BigCo. And everyone outside of BigCo looks at the whole company through one lens, whether it is Google or our customers. Until we decide that it is up to us to confront our fellow employees on bad behavior, we shouldn’t expect our corporate ethics to be any better than they’ve been.

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Today Facebook reported they’ve been awarded $711 million in damages by a San Jose, CA court against Sanford Wallace, the notorious “Spam King” that MySpace also successfully went after last year to the tune of a $234 million judgment.

That’s some serious cash. Of course, they don’t expect to see that kind of money from Mr. Wallace (probably a case of not being able to get blood from a stone). All Facebook needs to do is to continue to send the message that they are not going to roll over and play dead when the spammers come to town. I say good for them and I hope they keep at it.

Facebook’s blog tells the rest of the story because this is not the first time this has happened.

This isn’t the first time we’ve gone to court to battle spam. Last November, we also told you about our first victory—an $873 million judgment made against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital for sending sleazy messages to people on Facebook. This was the largest judgment ever for an action brought under CAN-SPAM. We continue to work on collecting as much as possible from Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue (likely far less than the full amount) and have hired a firm to help with this. We’re hopeful that this kind of persistent pressure will act as a deterrent against those attempting to trick and annoy people on Facebook.

At the end of their post the Facebook team states that they will “continue to bring spammers to justice.” While I understand the desire to clean things up this image of a Facebook super hero approach to the spam issue is too much for even the most zealous Facebook supporter to not chuckle at. But hey, it sure beats them rolling over and just allowing their product to get all junked up. Keep it up, Facebook.

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There is nothing wrong with a good joke – and spammers seem to have caught onto the idea that burying their ads under jokes might just work – odds are also highly likely that it does.

As a tactic this would work for some people who do not pay good attention to spammers and what they are doing or how they vary their techniques to get their links back to their pages filled with drug pushing goodness. I would also bet that many web site owners would pass on these thinking that their spam filter might have caught legitimate traffic. After taking a quick look through Google and filtering for obvious joke sites, there are about 30,000 sites that approved the Viagra to ground beef joke, meaning this tactic worked. What was interesting to see was there was not a tracking code within the spam message this time to make it easier to search Google for a random series of numbers and letters.

Not bad, interesting change to tactics on the part of spammers and very social in its nature, we all love a good joke. In addition, something to watch for as you approve or not approve messages on your web site or forum.

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At the end of 2008, the study showed one of the highest rates of spam at 94.2 percent. The good news is that the percentage of spam has decreased marginally in 2009. The first quarter of 09 showed 90.4 percent, and the number dropped even further in Q2 with 89 percent.

The numbers of the report conflict slightly with other spam researchers, Symantec, McAfee, and Cisco. Symantec is reporting a higher number of spam emails in Q2, then the ISPs. These companies also have provided stats that suggest botnets are the primary provider of spam.

Jerry Upton, executive director of MAAWG discusses the ISPs report, “And this doesn’t mean you are still not seeing spam or unwanted email getting to your inbox” because these numbers represent traffic caught before it hits users inboxes”

He continues, discussing the apparent drop in spam, “At times, we’re doing better, and at times we’re holding our own. This shows the bad guys aren’t winning, but neither are we.”

Upton also believes the dip in Q2 might simply be a matter of timing. Therefore, it isn’t safe to read too much into the spam decline, “This may be a somewhat seasonal pattern — it may go up”

A fact that many might not know is how much spam is blocked by ISPs before even hitting email inboxes. Couple that with the amount of email, and the costs of blocking spam mail significantly increases. Michael O’Reirdan, chairman of MAAWG, “ISP’s are stopping spam a lot at the front door using sophisticated techniques. But that involves significant cost”

In a few weeks, the Q3 numbers of the quarterly study will be released. Symantec has already produced their numbers which state that spam mails increased going into Q3.

Folks can now help us conquer spam by calling our attention to a profile they find questionable. Click the “Report as spam” button under the Actions section of a profile’s sidebar and our Trust and Safety team will check it out to see what needs to be done. No automated action will be taken as a result of reporting a user as spam (in other words, it can’t be used to incite an angry mob against an account you don’t like.) And once you report a profile it will automatically be blocked from following or replying to you. You nailed it!

All kidding aside, this is a nice step taken by Twitter to combat an issue that many feel is getting out of hand at a very rapid pace. Of course, this is also a necessary step because the last thing Twitter needs is to be more noise than information (especially if you are speaking to some pretty big names about your feeds).

So join Twitter in making the regal Land of Tweets clean of spam. Consider this your way to make Twitter “Go green” by ridding itself of excess stuff. If nothing else you will have contributed to the betterment of your corner of the social media world.

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