Blog Spam getting smarter or more stupid?
Everyone who runs a blog deals with the incessant blog spam. There are alot of tools out there that block this crap, or at least hold it until you can spank it.
On this site I use Spam Karma and recently the author of the tool mentioned that he was seeing in increase in “smarter spammers” that were doing things like using tools that can parse javascript (inserting javascript payloads into comment forms is a way to identify spammers). For every spam that comes in, Spam Karma will evaluate many criteria like black-lists, keywords, user-agents, etc.. to determine what is spam and what is not. Evidently, some think there are some new tools out there that are better at circumventing these controls. Well, that may be, but SK just spanked a spam that makes me think these morons are getting more stupid.
Another basic criteria of spam control is counting the number of URL links in the message body, and spanking those that exceed the blog-owner-set threshold. Most spam control tools I saw defaulted to three links being the limit, and I notice alot of spammers keep there URL links to only two so this criteria will not apply. This recent spam message that I mentioned actually had 32 URL links in the body. Since Spam Karma “scores” each message with negative points for each time they break a rule, this spam was tagged with a total “karma” of -308.5 (originating from a well known spammer blacklist did not help his case either)!! With the worst spam messages being aroung -50, this has to rank as the most amateurish spam message ever.