Those of you who own a blog or forum in some form will really know what spam is. Websites like this suffer from daily deluges of comment spam…comments that are placed for one reason only, and that is ‘link dropping’. Individuals & robots will post completely unrelated comments with links to their own websites. What these morons don’t know is that links from unrelated pages don’t hold much weight in search engine algorithms anymore. It’s about quality not quantity.
But the real problem is that some of these comments tend to be criminal in nature. The adult industry is one thing, but when you start to get comments with links pointing to websites containing rape videos, etc, that’s when you need to take action. If enough of us report these sites, we will make life that much more difficult for them, and that makes me happy!
The first thing you need to do is start logging IP addresses, many blogs such as wordpress will have this feature built in for you, but if your blog or forum doesn’t, chances are that there will be a plugin that you can download to do it for you.
The next thing you need to know, is where to report these links.
Thanks to wenwilder at webproworld, I now have a comprehensive list of places you can go to report these crimes…
Reporting Agencies & Law Enforcement:
International Law Enforcement
National Fraud Information Center
Internet Crime Complaint Center
Internet Fraud Center
FBI Tips and Public Leads
FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection
Anti-Phishing Working Group
the Federal Trade Commission
the F.B.I.’s Internet Crime Complaint Center
Other Security:
Security Tracker
Security Focus
DSL Reports
CERT
I-Cop
OCBA
Spyware Info
Anti Phishing
Geek Girls
Cyber Top Cops
Additional Resources…
Hi.. cool blog.. I was wondering if you would consider allowing me to add your blog feed to my news section on my webmaster website . I realise that not all of your posts are strictly webmaster related but ive written a script to only show posts containing certain keywords so theres no need to worry. Anyway, like i said.. cool blog.. some interesting stuff.. thanks
Absolutely, go right ahead, and so polite of you to ask!
Thank you for posting this. I use Dr Dave’s Spam Karma for the purpose of blocking comment spam and I must say it’s a winner.
I was not aware of the addresses for reporting illegal content, thanks – I’ll be bookmarking those promptly.
Last note: I really like this initiative. It re-affirms my trust in the selflessness of most web developers. Your site has been a major source of traffic to my own website as well.
Keep up the great work
A website has been put up that is a total defimation of character, malicous and totally untrue. I would like to find out who is hosting the site and who has publised the site so that I can proceed and take legal actions to remove the site. Who do I contact to do this?
keith, if it is a .co.za site then use:
http://whois.co.za/
If it is a .com site then use:
http://domains.whois.com/