We get a fair amount of spam on the Walker Blogs: Defensio has blocked 49108 spam messages since it started counting. Even with a 99.07% accuracy rate and a captcha, spam gets through our filters. Over the weekend, I noticed a couple spam comments come through that I thought were interesting. Here’s an example:
{Amazing|Amazing Dude|Wow dude|Thanks dude|Thankyou|Wow man|Wow}, {that is|this is|that’s} {extremely|very|really} {good|nice|helpful} {info|information}, {thanks|cheers|much appreciated|appreciated|thankyou}.
The geeky types among us will immediately recognize that as some sort of spam template language. Pick a word or phrase in each section, and you have a nearly limitless selection of spam phrases.
The template language in itself isn’t all that interesting, but what I found very interesting is that the link the spammer left goes to this account on del.icio.us:
The pages and pages of tagged links look to be the library of links that our spammer is using to spam blogs. The comments they’ve left on delicious look to be alternate text to be used as comments on posts. My guess is they’re using the del.icio.us tags to match keywords or tags on blog posts. I guess it’s not surprising to see spammers using web 2.0 services for doing their filthy work.
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