SPLOG = SPAM + BLOG

Friday, August 03, 2007

412,643 Splogs

As you can see the number is rising once again. Actually that's not because Google hasn't been deleting splogs but rather more splogs are being created and I've been having better luck at discovering them. I've also split the list into three pages.

Splog List - 2007 / 08 / 03
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Combined Page
20070803.tar.gz

I've been meaning to work on some some alternate analysis tools but I've been just too busy to do so. Hopefully I'll get around to work on them this month.

Monday, July 02, 2007

275,033 Splogs

The splog list update is long overdue. The splog count is way down and that's a good thing. As you can see Google is indeed deleting lots of splogs.

Splog List - 2007 / 07 / 02 - 20070702.tar.gz

I'll be ramping up data collection as well as more analysis. There are couple identification method theories I haven't explored yet and I'll be busy writing some code to test them out. We'll see what comes out of that.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

575,273 Splogs

It looks like Google is finally doing something about the current splog problem. They are indeed deleting and blocking splogs by large numbers. One significant change I've noticed as of late is that they are detecting splogs as they are being created and blocking them which is very good news. Hopefully this deters spammers from creating splogs since now they are wasting their time.

Splog List - 2007 / 05 / 15 - 20070515.tar.gz

Last month's infamous #704's quarter million splogs are mostly history. It turns out #702 is actually the same spammer as #704. I've seen splogs from #704 change it's AdSense account id to #702's account id. He still has about twenty thousand splogs remaining. I hope Google will stamp out rest of his splogs soon.

Two spammers top the list this time around. #753 and #752 top the list at 136,583 and 64,476 splogs respectively. Even though #752 has a smaller number he is one I'm keeping my eyes on because he is more active spammer right now. I see that Google is deleting many of his splogs but this spammer is creating lot more daily.

I will still be focused on AdSense spammers for at least one more cycle. There are still quite a few out there and I'm going to try to track them down.

Monday, April 23, 2007

692,407 Splogs

It's been almost a month since the last update so here it goes. I've merged my past AdSense spammers list into this list and they will be tracked from now on. There is this big jump in splog numbers despite the fact the Blogger folks are deleting large number of splogs as of late. About ten days ago I've noticed that Blogger has started blocking blocks of splogs citing terms of service violation. It's going to be interesting to see how spammers will react to this new barrier. I have not seen a significant rise or drop in number of new blogs created daily but I'm hopeful.

Splog List - 2007 / 04 / 23 - 20070423.tar.gz

I would like to highlight this one particular AdSense spammer (pub-3337253475650548) #704 with 265,421 splogs. I see that AdSense ads on his splogs are already disabled but it's not certain if his account was suspended as result of his spamming. One would think that he would be the candidate for AdSense account suspension but of course that' something I may never find out. Anyway he tops the list as the all time most number of splogs created for one AdSense account. Yes, it took Google more than quarter million splogs until they did anything. I'm also hoping that will change as well.

Monday, March 26, 2007

455,660 Splogs

It's been few weeks so it's time to update the list again. The list now stands at 455,660 splogs which is a modest gain from the last update earlier this month.

There is a good and bad points about this update. Even though I did not mention #193 specifically Google has deleted almost all of 72,918 splogs however sadly this spammer managed to create over 100,000 splogs during that time.

Google has deleted good bulk of AdSense spammer (pub-3337253475650548) #243's 96,129 splogs which I've highlighted earlier this month. That sounded like a good thing until I dug in little deeper. It appears this spammer got himself two more Adsense accounts pub-9261293433228058 and pub-6042971451021774. This spammer uses a site l-2-l.com to host FireFox image files for his splogs and created this pathetic splog as well as others splogs shown on his profile as a target for his redirect splogs. I see that he has resumed creating splogs by the thousands once again all pointing his splogs in effort to earn commission via AdSense. He is back up to above 17,000 already.

Splog List - 2007 / 03 / 26 - 20070326.tar.gz

It's clear I'll have to focus my attention back onto AdSense splogs. I will be reviewing all AdSense splogs I've published on this blog in the past and merging them into this list. I've already seen some new AdSense spammers creating anywhere from 20,000 to 250,000 per one AdSense account. I expect this list to get very big quickly.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

411,657 Splogs

It's been a month since my last update and it appears the splog numbers have skyrocketed since then. The list currently stands at 411,657 unique splogs. I see that Google does delete splogs but no where near the rate at which they are being created.

Splog List - 2007 / 03 / 06

Here is the tarball of the list for those that want to download the whole list.

20070306.tar.gz

Spammer #243 is the new reigning king of splogs this time around with 96,129 splogs to his name. This spammer is especially a bad since all of his splogs redirect to one splog get-firefox2.blogspot.com. This spammer is actually an AdSense (pub-3337253475650548) spammer since he wants people to download Firefox browser and get a commission. Even though I'm a big fan of Firefox browser I'm most definitely not a fan of what this spammer is doing. Hopefully Google can put a stop to this guy soon.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

216,995 Splogs

After almost a two month hiatus, I'm back. Actually I haven't gone anywhere. I've been busy collecting and monitoring the progress Blogger folks were making on deleting splogs. I've decided to update my splog list and add couple more entries. Instead of dumping the list directly on this blog I've made a page for my list to reduce clutter. Here is the link for the list of 216,995 splogs.

Splog List - 2007 / 02 / 08

Here is the tarball of the list for those that want to download the whole list.

20070208.tar.gz

Splog group #158 through #189 have been identified as splogs using a different methods than all the previous splogs on the list. I won't go into details of what that method is specifically but it's turning out to be quite an effective method so I will be using it in conjunction with previous methods. Since those groups were detected using a new method, there are duplicated splogs across the group.

There is this one spammer I've been keeping track of. It's the #182 on my list. At one time this spammer managed to create over 151,000 splogs but it looks like Blogger deleted almost 130 thousand of his splogs just recently. I'll be watching his bahaviors closely and report what I can.