Google Apps Harassment / Spam

My mailbox receives e-mails from Google on a daily basis. All these e-mails are regarding the 'upgrade' of MY Google Apps account. The problem is, I don't have a Google Apps account. I have a Google Analytics account for some of my websites (this being one of them).

At first they say you have an account.

Google Apps Spam

And when you try to login to that account, they say that I don't have an account.

So explain this; why do I get upgrade e-mails for something I don't have?

A typical example of using existing database information for luring people into getting other services.

Comment Spammers Do Research

Lately, the comment spam rose exponentially. The is done by automated scripts, usually from compromised PC around the world. This way the original spammer will remain anonymous.

The last couple of days I noticed weird search queries (Google search referrers) in my logging;

Looks like someone (probably in the Hong Kong area) is searching the Internet for specific blogs (I guess SquareSpace blogs looking at the query) that contain certain words / fiels, indicating that commenting is allowed. These keywords match 100% with the field / words in and around the blog comment area. Shortly after these searches, the comment spam came pouring in.

At the moment, the only remedy against these spam comments is to screen every newly submitted comment by an editor, since the automated spam detection on the Squarespace platform is basically worthless. Too bad, since they rock at everything else.

SquareSpace Traffic Statistics

First; I would recommend SquareSpace [2] to anyone who wants to run a website with lots of features and easy as 1-2-3. It's extremely easy to use, and no HTML knowledge is required to start modifying the layout etc. (it helps if you do though).

With the website comes a management center (Dashboard) where you can view traffic/visitor statistics (among a dozen of other things regarding the website). Every now and then, I see the traffic increase.

Green = Visiting IP's / Grey = Pageviews

Initially I thought;

Damn, they started the DDoS again....

After that;

They Slashdotted me (one can always hope)

Click to read more ...

The Holidays are Coming?

Is it just me or is the most expensive month of the year coming soon? It's that or there's a new worm/virus/trojan at work trying to deliver spam on my mailserver.

'Great' deals on SoftwareCurrently, I have over a hundred rejections an hour (normally one or two a day), and the ones that make their way through are either;

• 'great' deals on (replica) Rolex, Viagra, Windows/Adobe Software and other stuff, or
• about making >$3000USD a month with only 2 hours of work a day.

Anyway, I hope that the spam protection in the Snow Leopard mail server is as good as my current MDaemon mail server.

Massive Blog Spam

I, and probably the rest of the world as well, am being hit with spam in the comments at this moment. Over 100 comments a day are intercepted by Akismet.

It seems that all the spamjerks have found a way of creating userprofiles on public websites/forums/blogs and are referring to those in the spam. Below are some examples URL's which were active at the time of me writing this:

• http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/profile.jspa?editMode=true&userID=678271
• http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/profile.php?id=699061

I send an e-mai lto Lonely Planet descibing their problem. Let's hope that they fix it soon.

In the mean time; All hail Akismet!!!!