Search, link and trackback spam flooding web
Blogs, social sites and search results rivaling email for junk ads.
Email, long the most popular and lucrative means of getting advertising in front of computer users, is being
challenged by other online techniques, as 'Web 2.0' and complex click-through advertising systems leave the Internet
open to a deluge of online advertising.
Links on popular social sites such as MySpace and trackbacks on blog postings have become popular spots to
inject catchy slogans and often misleading phrasing aiming to draw traffic to sites pushing unlicensed
pharmaceuticals, suspicious financial services and pornography. MySpace has been targeted in the past by
malware pushing advertising as well as
spoofed shopping sites, and like other social sites continues to be
riddled with link spam.
Blog trackbacks, allowing links to peddling sites to be automatically inserted into postings, have allowed spammers
to bombard blogs and forums with their wares, including, as some
analysis from Sophos
shows, one Filipino news site which found it was hosting over 27,000 links to adult and financial sites.
Search results have also been manipulated to lead unwitting victims to both
malware and advertising. Some major new research, carried out jointly
by researchers from Microsoft and the University of California, investigates the complex webs of links
funneling advertising money from genuine sites and marketing syndication services into the hands of search and link
spammers. Some analysis of the results is
here, while the full paper can be found (in PDF
format) here.
22 March 2007
Tags:
spam
del.icio.us 
digg this
