As I was checking out my Akismet spam filter one day, I noticed a comment that was labeled differently than most of the other ones I’ve seen. This comment linked to a site called BotMaster. According to the site, BotMaster sells a service called Xrumer that comes bundled with Hrefer which is an automated link-building tool. BotMaster claims that the tool has nothing to do with spam and that its primary purpose is to build links and search engine power to your site.
These are funny claims considering a comment which was created by the BotMaster software appeared in Akismet as spam. This is the first time I’ve come across an actual site selling services/software for link building purposes. The software will set you back $450.00 but that seems like a high price to pay to have whatever site you are promoting to show up in Akismet as spam.
I am not trying to actively support or advertise this service but rather, highlight the fact that these things do exist. This makes me wonder how much spam is generated on forums and blogs with software such as this. Anyone else come across botmaster within their own Akismet interface?
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 
I don’t recall the name but I had spam for something similar. Interestingly though the spam was entered manually as my spam filter prevents all automated spam, so perhaps it doesn’t really do what it says on the tin?
theres many utomated link-building tools that reckon that their tool creates spam-free link directories Tools should have option to spam blogs ( spammer )with comments but thats pretty much ALL they do. This isnt the only way “spammers” work, there are hundreds of ways they figure out how to do black hat link building other than bots and automated “link building tools”.
CHeers,
Daniel Van der Woodsen
SEO Consultants last blog post..SEO Providers: How far does your SEO provider go?
Why do so many people find ‘Name’ so tricky on comments forms? Or were you really given the name ‘SEO Consultant’?
Detecting spam
Detecting spam based on the content of the e-mail, either by detecting keywords such as “Viagra” or by statistical means, is very popular. Such methods can be very accurate when they are correctly tuned to the types of legitimate email that an individual gets, but they can also make mistakes such as detecting the keyword “cialis” in the word “specialist”. The content also doesn’t determine whether the email was either unsolicited or bulk, the two key features of spam. So, if a friend sends you a joke that mentions “Viagra”, content filters can easily mark it as being spam even though it is neither unsolicited nor sent in bulk.
The most popular DNSBLs (DNS Blacklists) are lists of IP addresses of known spammers, open relays, zombie spammers etc.
Spamtraps are often email addresses that were never valid or have been invalid for a long time that are used to collect spam. An effective spamtrap is not announced and is only found by dictionary attacks or by pulling addresses off hidden webpages. For a spamtrap to remain effective the address must never be given to anyone. Some black lists, such as spamcop, use spamtraps to catch spammers and blacklist them.
Enforcing technical requirements of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) can be used to block mail coming from systems that are not compliant with the RFCr standards. A lot of spammers use poorly written software or are unable to comply with the standards because they do not have legitimate control of the computer sending spam (zombie computer). So by setting restrictions on the mail transfer agent (MTA) a mail administrator can reduce spam significantly. In many situations, simply requiring a valid fully qualified domain name (FQDN) in the SMTP’s EHLO (extended hello) statement is enough to block 25% of incoming spam. Similarly, enforcing the correct fall back of Mail exchange (MX) records in the Domain Name System, or the correct handling of delays (Teergrube) can be effective.
Uzair
Wide Circles