p2pnet - rss feed: New kind of blog con?
p2pnet news | Advertising:- There should perhaps be a question mark with the ‘Advertising’ category slug.
Lately, I’ve noticed p2pnet posts are being re-published in full, including pix, in a number of supposed ‘blogs’ under some really weird names, ie, Mortage Tips and Loans - Life insuarance [sic] and financial blog with Personal injury lawyers as a kind of sub category.
Is this a new way for people to use our work to put somehow put money into their own pockets?
The object of my exercise has always been to get the information out there and for that reason, I’ve always published under a Creative Commons license. So I’m not overly concerned when stories reappear elsewhere, with or without credit.
But Personal injury lawyers? Mortage Tips and Loans?
The url is http://loanandtitle.com/. Whois says it’s registered at GoDaddy, and that’s all.
Its archives start in January this year and it lists as categories
* Injury (6)
* Injury at work (3)
* Injury claim (1)
* Internet and Information (2)
* Long term debt (3)
* Personal injury lawyer (5)
* Personal injury lawyers (2)
* Quotes on car insurance (3)
* Real Estate (3)
* Refinance mortgage (8)
* Term life insurance quotes (6)
* Traffic accident lawyers (2)
* Train accident attorney (3)
* Truck accident lawyers (7)
* Work accident (4)
Each one leads to stories on my blog, and others, but not to actual companies.
Curious. The text above and below each ‘intro’ paragraph leader looks pretty much the same as the kind of stuff you see in commment spam and which, in the case of comment spam, has been generated by dedicated applications, for which users have to pay.
“I’ve a passion for [ ____ whatever] and keep looking for more info,” says Mortage Tips and Loans?. “Today, I checked if I could find more info by entering [ ____ whatever] and found this,” followed by a p2pnet story which has nothing to do with the supposed subject of the search.
Or, “Today I was digging for some info on [ ____ whatever] and came across the following section ……
And so on ….
And under each posts, “Frankly, not what I was looking for, but you might find it an interesting read” or, “Not exactly what I was looking for, nevertheless still a [sic] interesting read” or, “I tried several more searches on [ ____ whatever] but after some time I got lazy, gave up and posted this entry to [ ____ whatever]” or, “Still, I think it was an interesting time,” or, “Ah, well, back to the drawing board and try again.”
These phrases are repeated above and below teaser paragraphs.
The blog roll is:
* Affordable insurance
* Cute Toys and Bears
* Do it yourself at home
* Driving while intoxicated blog
* DUI and DWI Lawyers
* Famous People Exposed
* Gamez and Gamers
* Hockey Basketball Football Scenes
* Injury and Lwyers information
* Personal Injury blog
* Ruben Robijn
* Rugby Games
* Sauce making and Receipts
When you click on them you’re taken to story intros.
So what’s the point of these?
Will the at-the-moment pointless (to me) links eventually lead to genuine commercial sites once the so-called blogs have been online for a while and no-one’s paying attention to them?
Or am I being paranoid and is this a totally innocuous and innocent blog?
Any ideas?
Cheers!
Jon Newton - p2pnet
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February 16th, 2008 at 7:45 am
I have a feeling that this is
February 16th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Scratch that last comment please - typo!
I don’t think you’re being paranoid. I have a feeling that your articles are being used to generate spam. For years I have received (and I’m sure you have too), spam that has dismembered sections of stories at the end that bear no relation to the crap that they are peddling. I guess these are supposed to somehow fool the spam filters, although that doesn’t seem to work.
February 16th, 2008 at 9:27 am
What is happening is spammers are creating webpages based on other peoples work in the hopes that visitors to said webpages will click on the ads shown within. With the onslaught of various kinds of spam, it won’t be long before the Internet become only a network of links between protected private networks.
Government-corporate censors and spammers have ruined a good thing.
February 16th, 2008 at 10:08 am
In example above, there aren’t any ads to click on, which is why I’m wondering if this is some kind of lead-in.
But there’s a link to this post which very definitely has ads to click - link - http://insurance.biyad.com/?p=13676
It’s also inadvertently displaying html code, ie:
Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to fetch http://www.feedster.com/search/type/rss/life%20insurance%20quotes (HTTP Error: connection failed (11) in /home/raju79/public_html/insurance/wp-content/plugins/wp-autoblog/rss_fetch.inc on line 237
Warning: MagpieRSS: Failed to fetch http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=web&rss=1&q=life%20insurance%20quotes (HTTP Response: HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden ) in /home/raju79/public_html/insurance/wp-content/plugins/wp-autoblog/rss_fetch.inc on line 237
Cheers! (edited)
February 17th, 2008 at 9:06 am
It’s an annoying practice known as scraping a site. And, yes, it’s designed to generate spam. You can use a plugin to turn that stolen content into a link back to your site, though, which means you get to take advantage of the spammers in return. The plugin, written by Joost Devalk is at: http://www.joostdevalk.nl/wordpress/rss-footer/