The Finch Formerly Known As Gold

22 September 2007

Please delete me, let me go

One of the Blogger sites I occasionally read (but had not blogrolled) presented me with an odd phenomenon yesterday: the page loads normally, then everything after the first post title is replaced with spam. Poking around for an explanation, I first stumbled across this:

Check out how a widget has spammed a blog

On this page about Factor Programming http://psalm35.blogspot.com/

It has a script in its footer: <script src=http://www.oedemera.com/blogger_navbar/navbar_012.php>

When you visit the page with Javascript turned on, all the contents are replaced dynamically with ads.

This is beyond sick.

And it's beyond most of the widgets I've seen, admittedly a small sample. Another explanation from another blog:

I suspect that what happened was this:

1 - 962 [a Hong Kong blogger] decided to stop blogging.

2 - He deleted his blog, freeing up the URL.

3 - Some spider or robot discovered this and claimed the URL, associating it with a different Google account.

So 962 would not be able to access the settings for that blog.

His only recourse is to report this to Blogger, that his blog has now become a splog (spam blog) and hope that an actual human being reads his message and takes some action.

Finally, a use for that FLAG BLOG button.

Oedemera, incidentally, is a genus of beetle. All spammers, I think, should name themselves for crawling insects.

Posted at 1:17 PM to Blogorrhea , Scams and Spams