These aren't new, but I've been scratching my head over them for a while: Trackback and Pingback spam for Google searches, e.g.

http://www.google.com/search?q=epwefnsr
http://www.google.com/search?q=pvarioxu
http://www.google.com/search?q=qfceusgw
http://www.google.com/search?q=mwryzvew

The search phrase is always complete gibberish (never a real word) and it's never the same twice, as far as I can see. And at least today, they seem to come in pairs: A single Trackback and a single Pingback from the same IP address.

What are those about? It's clearly someone experimenting, but what are they trying to accomplish? read more

Dear stupid trackback spammer at 81.95.144.66,

in case you haven't noticed yet: None of the trackback spams you have attempted to send to this and a couple of other sites over the last 24 hours has made it through. They are deleted automatically, and I didn't even have to block your IP address ...

Sincerely,
The Management

I'm not sure what the portal_memberdata directory on a site using the Plone CMS usually does, but one spammer is currently using it in a massive spam campaign. This seems to be an issue in Plone that has since been fixed, so all those sites have probably not been updated yet and he's simply abusing them. At least I would hope that, for example, the University of Toronto hasn't decided to start spamming the world for "cash strapped teens"[sic!].

In other words: Another case of Keep your scripts up to date! read more

Just got a bunch of trackback spams for "splogs" (spam blogs - for the record: I hate that word), all hosted at blogspot.com - again. Which reminded me that Google's Matt Cutts recently cheered the reduction of blog spam. Sorry Matt, but I beg to differ.

What's especially annoying about those splogs at blogspot.com is that Google / Blogger don't really seem to care. First you have to dig into the help to find a way to even report them. Then it takes a long time before they get back to you (and the spammers have since moved on anyway). And the answer you get eventually may be something like this:

Please note that if you encounter other such content in the future, you can use our automated flagging mechanism to bring this to our attention. For further information on the "Flag As Objectionable" feature, please see Blogger Help

Well, guess what? I can't use that feature because those splogs do a redirect when you call them up. In a response to such an answer from Blogger, I've suggested they do something about these redirects but apparently they didn't (as that was half a year ago and it's still working).

Would Google please start sweeping their own doorstep? read more

Something out of the 212.24.48.* IP range is currently trackback spamming for - google.com. The actual text of the trackback comment is:

HI! I've have similar topic at my blog! Please check it.. Thanks.

Followed by a link (both in HTML and bbcode) to google.com. So whatever or whoever that is, they're obviously testing something and it can't hurt to block them now before something else comes from there.

The IP address range belongs to Caravan in Moscow, Russia. Hmm, now where have I heard that name before?