Thursday, November 19, 2009

Spam is not just a canned lunchmeat product

I've been sick for a few days and just starting to get back up and going, so it should be understandable why when I got a question on the blog asking:

"Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!"

Signed by anonymous, of course, it sort of set me off on a grumbling mood. You see, the first thing that I noticed was the question on where to find a program that "everyone knows about!" on a low outta the way blog that even I know does not have as much traffic as most business resources. It took me about 3 seconds to type the name into my search bar on Firefox and locate the Blogspot blog for this program. Another three seconds to type "xrumer spam" into the same search bar and find a bunch more information.

My second search turned up a bit on Panda Security about XRumer where Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs, comments: “The program even has a FAQ section. Curiously enough, in one of the FAQs the author claims XRumer is not a program for creating spam.”

Not a program for creating spam... hmmm... I just watched their ten minute video at their Blogspot blog that explains how they use it to post to blogs and forums. In fact, the post is even titled "XRumer SEO Blackhat Post To 100k or Millions Of Forums Blogs"... that kind of sounds to me like they know that it is a Blackhat technique and that it will post to hundreds of thousands to millions of blogs and forums. How exactly do they define spam? "canned lunchmeat"?

XRumer, of course, does not care if those that use it are creating spam links that will, in the long run, destroy a person's credibility and online business. All the makers of this program care about is getting their $540 for the program.... or they'll let you try it for $50 a month. Rather expensive way to flush your credibility down the drain if you ask me, and only gets more expensive as your sites are labeled as spam sites that employ Blackhat SEO tricks.

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Friday, September 12, 2008

Computer restart issues

I have been having very serious computer issues this past week, my computer seemed to have some kind of glitch that caused it to restart again and again when I would try to boot it up in the mornings. I think I tracked the problem down to a program that Windows XP did not digest properly, but I'm not sure. I ended up rebooting the computer to the factory settings. Lost a bunch of things, but I don't think I have lost the computer. It'll be a couple of days before I know if that cured the SNAFU, or just gave me a brief respite from the issue for a few days.

I had tried all kinds of fixes before resorting to resetting the whole system, including setting back to older dates on the computer and defrag, virus check, Spybot, etc, etc, etc... none of them seemed to work, so deciding that I would prefer to send the weekend reconstructing the computer than spend next week trying to figure out how to buy a new one, I backed up whatever I could and reset the sucker. I'm slowly getting it put back together now and hope to have it sorta back up to speed by Monday morning.

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