Splog Spot Blog » Content

Splogs happen

Jon — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:45:02 +0000

One important thing you should know about splogs is that it will happen — whatever you do, unscrupulous people will set up splogs that will irritate us and make searching for the correct information just a little harder. But for internet surfers, a splog is an inconvenience at the most.

It’s not the same thing with web site and blog owners. Splogs pose a bigger problem because splog operators are also copyright thieves. Splogs are notorious for stealing the content of other web sites and it is only a matter of time before sploggers get hold of your content and use it for their splogs.

One of the first things you must do when dealing with splogs and content stealing is that this kind of robbery will happen. No one is immune from it so you should be prepared about it happening to you. With the continued explosive growth of the internet, content is becoming more and more precious. And as with anything that has value, some people will try to steal it.

It’s the reason why you should have a plan in place in case someone steals the content of your web site or blog.

Next time I’ll tell you more about how to handle content stealing.

Nifty Tools Dificult Tools

Jon — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:50:36 +0000

The clamor to come up with an answer to the rising splog threat has many authors developing ways of securing and monitoring blogs that would be a good indicator of any attempts to hack or modify your posts. One such easy way to monitor your blog is with the DigoWatchWP which closely monitors your blogs on WordPress and sends you an email if any changes are found, even if the email says there is no change.
WPIDS is a blog protection system that is developed for the WP platform that prevents malicious code injection into your blogs. The filters will notify you of any attempts to modify your blog that is modified along with the many WP updates that come and goes as they come out of the grinder. There are some issues to address that may need sone study and implementation may need quite some extensive PHP knowledge.
Some other projects are in the works and they promise more robust protection for WordPress-based blogs though some of the previously best and free ones have gone off-line there are a lot more coming out to help you and your blog to survive the ever growing perils of the social internet.

Fair Syndication – On the Right Track?

Jon — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:27:38 +0000

The advent and rise of the splogs has triggered a debate between bloggers, the online ads industry and the Fair Syndication Consortium that debates the situation whether ad companies should remunerate web sites that use stolen content. The opposing parties has people on both sides raising their own points, on the side of the bloggers content should be guarded and deemed as personal property, on the side of the consortium they say that they are fighting for the said right, getting these splog sites to get their claimed earnings from ads but steering some of the profits down the line to the bloggers who were responsible for the blog posts.
Very much a blurred line exists between the grounds by which they stand, and being sponsored by many big businesses and other major players the consortium is indeed raising a very real fact, splogs are here and there is no sure way to combat them or prevent them from plagiarizing content from other sites, kinda goes to the tune of “If you can;t beat them, Join them!”. The bloggers and several thousand writers are still trying to obtain ways of shutting down these splogging sites but as mentioned, there are ways by which you can indeed profit from these sites but the line is thin and you can end up losing more that you hope to gain. The debate is detailed in the following post from TechCrunch where more details are brought to light.

Hidden Splog Dangers

Jon — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 09:08:25 +0000

There is an alarming rise in the incidence of splogs becoming a way of spreading malware in the form of phishing or other identity theft scams and people are taking notice. Spam blogs as we know are blogs that are created solely to steer ranking bots to their sites without giving second thought about the many sources they plague. There are also link-farms that do more than just steal content, they automatically fill in links to boost their own sites gaining more attention from indexing bots. Being bots themselves, these nasties prey upon unsuspecting blogs, stealing their content not giving a damn about the hard work that went into making the said posts. Comment and track-back scams are also on the rise which send multiple comments promoting certain products such as drugs and other obviously fake products. They can be used for DoS attacks, flooding hosting servers with comments that if left unattended can swell into the thousands.
Having a blog and getting hundreds of comments is a sure sign you may be falling victim to such activities, spam comments can easily be screened with captcha plugins that seems to be one of the simplest ways of getting rid of spam comments. As with splogs, the link-back technique is still the most effective way to kick them out and one can take action with Google’s AdSense by reporting the said sites and kicking them out of business. There may be no immediate action taken but with our combined effort, we can surely find a way to kick them out and to get our content to our readers who deserve nothing but the best. Bloggers of the world should unite and get these blogs out so we can blog in peace for whatever reason we may see fit.

Why They Can’t be Stopped

Jon — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:36:10 +0000

The scourge of the Splogs and their Splogging creators are truly nagging each and every blogger on the planet yet there is a specific fact that bloggers have pointed out, why there is not much in terms of tools or utilities/plugins that can stop these bots? That is a question we’d have to press and keeping silence is like telling these guys that they can get away with what they’re doing. Spamming plugins like Akismet abound yet there are not much available for controlling the stealing actions of these programs. We’d have to ask the many WordPress developers out in the wild of the internet that question or maybe they are already doing something about it and are about to do so in the near future. Most bloggers are forced to do the unthinkable, kill their blogs and start anew with the plugins they find that nips the bud before it opens.
But killing a blog isn’t always the best option for established blogs, random blogs and anything in between are being hit again and again. The action would also bolster the ego’s of these darned crooks and fighting back may be the best course of action. Reporting the sploggers to Google is one option with it’s adsense system that ranks blogs and content accordingly. That way, they can kill these bots, shutting them down permanently. The downside, is that like the rest of malware out in the wild, they seem to be adapting as fast as controls are put in place. A simple relocation or use of the millions of IP addresses tends to leave these plugins in the dust catching up when they smell the stink and so on and so forth. More on the scourge of blogs in the coming posts, blog safe and keep safe.

Splog Mechanics

Jon — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:35:12 +0000

We all know of the situation, you work hard researching a blog post and you get it out to the most people possible through the many publishing methods on the web making your content work for you. Then you notice that your very much colorful blog is losing authority and find that your RSS feeds are being tapped by unknown people stealing your content and claiming them as their own getting the exposure you should have been and not even giving you any credit for it. Call it copy/paste, plagiarism and even plagiarism but stealing is stealing yet with the problem out in the open, why hasn’t anybody thought of a way to seek these sites and shut them down? Even the many a brilliant minds out there on the net have admitted again and again that the net is too vast a territory to police and such activities are too random and predictable at the same time that there is no specific way to root them out.
One method employed by established bloggers is to use an AntiLeech plug-in which creates a fake blog post for them to lock onto, at the same time obtaining their IP Addresses and blocking further attempts by these crazy bots from stealing further content. It also works by setting up the fake blogs with a link-back that links back to your site that can be annoying to the splogger. There is a problem though, any content already stolen is not recoverable and as fast as it does it’s work to prevent the act, the bot adapts and changes IP address again getting hold of more of your precious posts. The fake posts look legit enough to trap these splogging bots yet they are reacting seemingly as if preempting such actions. More in the coming posts on how these nuisance programs work and how we can fight back.

Splogs on Your Blogs – Kicking Back

Jon — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:55:20 +0000

Splogs are blogs that use your content without permission, posts them onto their sites for profits without even giving you a mention or credit for what they’ve done. They do get away with it and in the process they earn in terms of traffic to their sites thus increasing their profits. Most experts suggest kicking back by adding a simple plugin called RSS Footer that comes from Ytoast.com which allows you to automatically add an extra line of content to your feed that automatically places a footer that say’s “Post From :” with a link to your blog along with your blog’s name. Splogs are simple copy/paste artists who leach traffic from your site to theirs thus getting traffic that should have been yours.
People on the WordPress forums suggest that you rename the wp-signup.php file which they say is quite effective at stopping them dead in their tracks. Most others have implemented simple yet effective re-CAPTCHA implementation which can be obtained from their site. This seems to be a very effective screen for botnets who automatically prey on your blogs, relying on human vision and interpretation for a security measure that seems to defy current computer technology. But the easiest way seems to be re-naming the sign-up scripts which is being implemented by most bloggers and admins alike. Opinions differ on the best approach so do keep tabs on future posts for new and improved ways to battle the menace that are splogs.