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Ya.com and AtSpace.com — New Domains for Your Comment Spam Blacklist

Filed under “Blogging” and “Technology & the Law”
by Adam at 2:51 PM on February 20, 2005

6 Comments

I’ve been getting a lot of spam from what appear to be two free web hosts lately. I’ve added both ya.com and atspace.com to my MT-Blacklist configuration, with both set to moderate.

I’d hate to turn down any legit comments that might come from people hosted with these companies. If Technorati is any indication, there does seem to be some non-spam hosting going at at both companies. So far, though, I haven’t seen any legitimate traffic at all — just spam.

If this keeps up, these hosts will both get switched from moderate to block. My advice to anyone seeking web hosting is to look elsewhere. The fact that tons of spam is coming from their customers while they look the other way is reason enough not to give them your business.

This is officially the first time I’ve used rel="nofollow" in an entry.

Update

A member of the Atspace support team was nice enough to address my concerns about link spam in the comments to this entry. You can read our exchange below.

Adam is a web developer and graphic designer who lives and works in south-central Kansas. He likes to speak his mind, both here and in his business blog. He only rarely writes about himself in the third person, honest. If you’d like to work with Adam, drop him a line.

6 Comments

  1. I find ut a little ironic that you are linking to that sites in your post , seeing that that is the only reason they comment spam, to get you to link to them! ;)

    Comment by Erik Thulin — March 7, 2005 @ 11:32 pm

  2. That’s why I used the rel="nofollow" tag. Keeps search engines from indexing the web sites.

    I don’t mind linking to the home pages of the hosting companies, since I suspect that they’re legit but lax in enforcing their security policies. I can’t be sure, however, so I’m also using “nofollow”.

    Comment by Adam M. — March 8, 2005 @ 8:55 am

  3. Dear Sir,
    I have found this article of yours and would like to comment on it.
    Our company is never allowing anyone to spam from our servers. (The free hosting is not allowing any SMTP features) So I do not know why are you promoting blocks against us.
    I would be very grateful if you reply to this message and point out the problems that you are facing so we can eliminate them and protect the internet users from possible spams or other abuses.
    Thank you for your time and consideration!
    ATSPACE.COM Support

    Comment by Atspace webmaster — March 29, 2005 @ 5:30 pm

  4. Thanks for taking the time to respond to my concerns. Your response, however, indicates that you’re confused about the distinction between e-mail spam and comment spam.

    Comment spam — also known as link spam or blog spam — is the practice of posting hundreds and hundreds of “junk” comments to weblogs, with links in those comments to a web site selling some kind of product or service. Like e-mail spamming, the goal is to get free advertising and draw people to your web site. Unlike e-mail spam, no SMTP access is required. The subject matter and content of comment spam is similar to that of e-mail spam.

    The complaint I made in this post was that a large amount of spam was showing up on my weblog that linked back to pages hosted at ya.com or atspace.com. This type of network abuse is probably more difficult to detect and prevent than e-mail spamming, but I strongly recommend that the Atspace support staff educate itself about this new menace.

    For more information about comment spamming I recommend the following reading: The Register’s “Interview with a Link Spammer,” the “Link Spam” entry on Wikipedia, and the “Six Apart Guide to Combating Comment Spam” (from the company that makes Movable Type).

    Comment by Adam M. — March 29, 2005 @ 8:00 pm

  5. Dir Sir,
    Thank you for pointing out the problem clearly.
    Actually our staff is quite familiar with this problem. We are constantly blocking new abusing accounts that are doing this sort of blog spam activity.
    Unfortunately the service is growing exponentially and it is possible that we cannot find out all the abusers this fast.
    We would be grateful if someone encouters such a proble just to report it to us and we will take immediate actions.
    Thanks in advance!

    Comment by Atspace webmaster — March 30, 2005 @ 6:31 am

  6. Thanks again for being so responsive to my concerns. I’ve updated the original post to point out our exchange in the comments.

    Comment by Adam M. — March 30, 2005 @ 8:46 am

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