Its interesting to see how spammers change their style and method of spamming. Today I came across a 'poker' blog (on blogspot.com, obviously). I was surprised to see 10 comments on a post. Even though I knew those comments were spam for sure, I just clicked out of curiousity. To my surprise, what I saw was an evolved form of comment spamming. The comments looked so genuine. If it weren't for a hyperlink in that comment, I would never come to know that it was spam. Similarly, all the comments on that page looked SO real. Quite astounding.

Checkout the raw copy of the page attached.

Not so good news. I am (hesitantly) going to put a very small ad unit on the Pingoat homepage inorder to raise some funds (I hope it helps). If it works out well, the ad will be removed after a month or so. I would like to hear your views on this "action" (If you find the ad annoying, I'll happily get rid of it)

Misc:
> focuslook.com added to the ping list.
> Splogspot now has around .1 million spam blogs in its database.


Update - 25 Nov 2005
Well, nothing is working out. No revenue, no funds

Pingoat's new spam filters have been blacklisting a lot of innocent blogs lately, along with splogs. If you find your legit blog blacklisted, please email with details to get the issue resolved immediately.

Sorry for the inconvenience !

A 'Recently updated Splog' list updated every now and then
http://splogspot.com/recent


Miscellanious
Photoblog.be partners with Pingoat to offer pinging service to their premium users
http://www.photoblog.be/index.php?action=partners

erssbuilder.com has teamed up with Pingoat to offer pinging service to small/mid-size businesses

It seems Technorati isnt processing pings from Pingoat.com for some reason. The rpc server returns a success message, but I dont see content being spidered by Technorati. I had sent a mail earlier explaining the problem, but never got a reply. Anyway, let me try mailing them again and then we'll see what is the real cause.

Its funny and most of the times frstruating to watch the 'splog trend'. I've been working with splogs so much that just by seeing the title and the url, I can accurately predict whether a blog is splog or not! Also, everyday, I see funny trends in splogs.

Like on certain days, there would be very less number of splogs or no splogs at all or the opposite. Sometimes I see a special group of splogs that I'd like to call 'celebrity spam' That'd be "Bradd Pitt, brad-pitt.blogspot.com/brad-pitt1", blogs with junk contents and dozens of them focusing on different celebrities. Now I've added an automated filtering techic that completely filters out celebrity spam. This is obviously done by one person or a group of connected persons.

And what ever the trend is, blogs on the subjects 'Weight loss, Pills, Investment/Insurance, Dieting..' tops the charts. Among this, weightloss is the worst. I've seen a lot of people justify their spam blogs, but the funny thing is that Why in the world is everybody starting a new 'Weight loss' blog crammed with ads!

Then comes the adult blogs. I haven't seem much adult splogs, but 99% of the adult blogs being submitted are just pics and no content :| Verdict: blacklist.

What these sploggers dont realise is that they wont anything but hatred (I hate to say that). I haven't heard of any splogger who has become a millionaire by cramming adsense and spamming directories and all.

And finally, I'm really happy to see a lot of people writing on subjects like 'Weight loss, Quit smoking, Clear debts..' crammed with adsense ads. Its really interesting to see these people's willingness to provide valuable information and help to others :| (When is this going to end

Its been a few days since I showed myself on Pingoat. I'm feeling almost ok now.. Today I am working to add the weblogUpdates.extendedPing and three brand new services to the service list! I will be able to release the anti-splog project which I had mentioned earlier, very soon.

Today is one of the worst days of my life. My dearest of the dearest friend Tithin passed away today morning, after a year long struggle with Blood cancer. Maybe God isnt so good afterall
God bless his soul.
Tithin, lots of love - Kailash

http://boastology.com/blog/post/index/157/Sad-demise

Spam and splog! I just hate them! I now have to manually verify 465 pages (with 100 entries on each page) of blacklisted blogs and mark them as spam manuall. Now how cool is that! This is the spam that gets past the default antispam measures.

Anybody have any ideas? Seriously, like voluenteering for the 'marking as spam' project?

The crackdown
Yes, atleast 10,000 domains have been blacklisted! (and growing..) The security measures have been tightened. I expect the spam to be cut by atleast 70% ( We soon might have a cpatcha on the homepage! )


Update
Innocents blacklisted!
I apologised to all those good and innocent blogger's who got blacklisted after the security upgrade! That was not intentional, but purely accidental. If you have been blacklisted, drop me a mail and you will be immediately cleared.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update
Important: New measures
My inbox is flooded with email from innocent people! I'm processing the requests immediately upon the recipt of email

Please understand that you wont get blacklisted for frequent pings. Even if you ping 10 times an hour, Pingoat wont blacklist you. (you'll get a too frequent pings error though). Blogs get blacklisted when they contain objectionable content. Blogs created by bots / with random content only with the intention of reaping adsense revenues are blacklisted.

Suspicions, Suspicions, Suspicions.. Lately, I've seen people asking 'How/Why' pingoat is pinging those services so fast? Some people even sent me mails asking 'Is Pingoat really sending pings afterall?' ! The answer is YES. Pingoat is sending pings properly. But sorry, I cant reveal the secret of its speed

PS: It seems there is some problem with Technorati's xml-rpc server. Pingoat is getting an error 403 while pinging. I've mailed Technorati, but no response yet.

My apologies to all Pingoat users As you might have noticed, Pingoat has been treating every ping and submission as Spam for the past two days. What actually happened was that a single host spammed Pingoat so hard that somehow to 'ban list' messed up and Pingoat wouldn't accept any pings. The issue has been resolved and everything is working fine as ever.

I regret the incoveniences caused. Thank you for your understanding..