Tag Archives: spam blog

What is a SPAM blog?

After receiving a letter form Google/Blogger informing that my Mom writes for a cause is a spam blog, I also found this on my dashboard in red letters.

“This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked.
This blog will be deleted within 20 days unless you request a review.”

After pressing the request unlock review button

This is what came up.

Your blog is marked as spam
Blogger’s spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What’s a spam blog?) Since you’re an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.
We received your unlock request on September 17, 2009. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.
Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.

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I want to be enlightened on this. Here’s what’s Blogger has to say about SPAM BLOGS. I’m posting it in toto:

Is spam permitted on Blogger?

What Are Spam Blogs?

As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people’s writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.
What We’re Doing About Spam

Needless to say, we do not approve of spamming here at Blogger. Below are some of the things we’ve implemented to remove and reduce spam on our service. We will update this list as we continue our efforts.

* Automated spam classifying algorithms keep spam blogs out of NextBlog and out of our “Recently Published” list on the dashboard.
* The same classifiers are used to require an extra word verification field on the posting form for potential spam blogs. This makes it harder for spammers to set up automated systems to do their posting, since a human needs to complete this step.
* The Flag as Objectionable button in the Navbar lets you notify us of problem blogs that you find, so we can review them and take appropriate action.
* Report spam here.

I’ll wait for Google/Blogger’s response on my review request. I’ll keep you posted.

Do I own a spam blog?

I received a letter from Google only to tell me that I own a spam blog? But why? How? Did I violate any rules of Blogger? Or some individual(s) playing tricks on me by trying to malign me or my site . God forbid.

“Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You.”

Here’s the exact email they sent me this morning. What a way to start the day?

To get to the bottom of this incident I requested them (Blogger) to conduct a blog review otherwise my site will be deleted in the face of the blogosphere in 20 days just like that.  Even if some inherently fuzzy automatic spam detection system caused this, the incident drives me nut today. Is this a cause for concern? Definitely yes especially for a ‘clueless’ blogger like me.

Is this an isolated case? Have you encountered a similar incident like this one? What is your initial reaction? And what did you do to remedy the situation? Please let me know your experience on this. Thanks for sharing.

Now, just before publishing this entry, Blogger is requiring me to fill out their word verification box. What the?