Spamdexing 91
Cookie stuffing
Cookie stuffing involves placing an affiliate tracking cookie on a website visitor's computer without their
knowledge, which will then generate revenue for the person doing the cookie stuffing. This not only generates
fraudulent affiliate sales, but also has the potential to overwrite other affiliates' cookies, essentially stealing their
legitimately earned commissions.Using world-writable pages
Web sites that can be edited by users can be used by spamdexers to insert links to spam sites if the appropriate
anti-spam measures are not taken.
Automated spambots can rapidly make the user-editable portion of a site unusable. Programmers have developed a
variety of automated spam prevention techniques to block or at least slow down spambots.Spam in blogs
Spam in blogs is the placing or solicitation of links randomly on other sites, placing a desired keyword into the
hyperlinked text of the inbound link. Guest books, forums, blogs, and any site that accepts visitors' comments are
particular targets and are often victims of drive-by spamming where automated software creates nonsense posts with
links that are usually irrelevant and unwanted.Comment spam
Comment spam is a form of link spam that has arisen in web pages that allow dynamic user editing such as wikis,
blogs, and guestbooks. It can be problematic because agents can be written that automatically randomly select a user
edited web page, such as a Wikipedia article, and add spamming links.[8]Wiki spam
Wiki spam is a form of link spam on wiki pages. The spammer uses the open editability of wiki systems to place
links from the wiki site to the spam site. The subject of the spam site is often unrelated to the wiki page where the
link is added. In early 2005, Wikipedia implemented a default "nofollow" value for the "rel" HTML attribute. Links
with this attribute are ignored by Google's PageRank algorithm. Forum and Wiki admins can use these to discourage
Wiki spam.Referrer log spamming
Referrer spam takes place when a spam perpetrator or facilitator accesses a web page (the referee), by following a
link from another web page (the referrer), so that the referee is given the address of the referrer by the person's
Internet browser. Some websites have a referrer log which shows which pages link to that site. By having a robot
randomly access many sites enough times, with a message or specific address given as the referrer, that message or
Internet address then appears in the referrer log of those sites that have referrer logs. Since some Web search engines
base the importance of sites on the number of different sites linking to them, referrer-log spam may increase the
search engine rankings of the spammer's sites. Also, site administrators who notice the referrer log entries in their
logs may follow the link back to the spammer's referrer page.