Somebody signed my guestbook today. It says
Quote: Jennifer Martino (Chicago)
thnks
I have no idea who this person is but that's not too unusual. I get lots of people I don't know signing my guestbook, but she said "thanks" in her message so I was curious to know what I had done for her. So I googled it and was really surprised by what I found.
If you check the search results you'll see that this same person has signed hundreds of different guestbooks. It seems to be completely random serial mass-guestbook-posting. All sorts of guestbooks, all over the world, again and again.
Now if her posts included a website link or some sort of propoganda message I would assume she's just spamming guestbooks. But that's not the case at all. I just find this wierd. There's certainly no problem with it. I just don't get it.
Nip it in the bud!
Greg K posted this at 16:27—19th May 2005.
He has: 1,639 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
Imagine that, someone browsing the web, and using a feature (the guestbook) offered by those sites she visits.
I sure hope this is something that doesn't start happening all over!
-Greg
[This space intentionally left blank]
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fifeclub posted this at 16:52—19th May 2005.
He has: 675 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
lol
I like that she signed my guestbook. I wish all my visitors signed my guestbook. I just find it odd how this one person has signed so many guestbooks (several hundred) around the world.
Nip it in the bud!
clientcenters posted this at 16:02—21st May 2005.
They have: 24 posts
Joined: May 2004
fifeclub, guestbook spam happens alot. The spammers know the majority of the time, the guestbook owners will look at their profile to find out what url they came from. The best thing to do is to find a guestbook script that will let you preview posts before going live, or require email validation or guestbook registration before posting. Or disable the URL feild may help but not prevent all.
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fifeclub posted this at 13:13—23rd May 2005.
He has: 675 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Perhaps I'm not being clear enough. The reason I thought this is so unusual is because this person is NOT spamming in any way. No links. No message about another website. Just a simple "thanks"... but on several hundreds of different guestbooks. The fact that she signed over 500 guestbooks with no alterior motive is what I find unusual.
Nip it in the bud!
dvduval posted this at 03:26—22nd May 2005.
They have: 52 posts
Joined: Dec 2002
Yes, if you don't have decent guestbook software, you end up running a "free for all" links page, and this is never a good thing.
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timjpriebe posted this at 14:08—23rd May 2005.
He has: 2,666 posts
Joined: Dec 2004
That does seem a little unusual. Maybe she just likes to be able to Google her own name and show up tons of times.
Tim
http://www.tandswebdesign.com
dvduval posted this at 14:17—23rd May 2005.
They have: 52 posts
Joined: Dec 2002
I wonder if it is a robot that was trying to spam a bunch of guest books, but failed to fill in the form fields correctly, and instead only submitted "Thanks".
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wwwben posted this at 00:52—29th May 2005.
He has: 285 posts
Joined: Jan 2005
or maybee she is going for a world record in signing guestbooks.
fifeclub posted this at 14:00—8th June 2005.
He has: 675 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
=================
F O L L O W U P
=================
I still believe that the incident mentioned above is an innocent mass-poster. But starting about a week after this happened my personal website began to get crushed by spammers. Before May I averaged one guestbook entry every few months. Suddenly in the last 3 weeks I've been averaging about 1.5 per day... all spamming the same crappy porn site with a /differentaffiliate at the end. All the posts are generic saying stuff like "great job" and "thanks" but this is totally annying the crap out of me!
Looks like a few bad apples ruined it for all the others who played nice, and now I'll need to (at least) delete the website input field on the guestbook form.
Nip it in the bud!
EGS posted this at 23:31—8th June 2005.
They have: 168 posts
Joined: Jan 2005
Guestbooks get spammed a lot. At least she didn't leave a link to her site (if she has a site) in your guestbook.
I hate seeing that.
Anyway, what you're looking at is probably a bot...a spam bot. This spam bot has the ability to create mass-posts in hundreds of people's of guestbooks with random names and IP addresses using the server.
You may have been lucky to find the same bot results on Google, but rest assured that the results you may have searched for may not be "targeted". I mean...it may not be the same person, etc etc etc.
(^_^)b
I'll quack like a penguin, and sting like a flee.
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demonhale posted this at 01:41—9th June 2005.
He has: 3,258 posts
Joined: May 2005
Imagine getting guestbook signing every second every day making the sites hosting you or your site max up and crash.... Querying even a site multiple times with different host computers like the DOS (denial of service) attacks could be quite horrific. Imagine if their just practicing now for a greater plan...
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fifeclub posted this at 15:01—13th June 2005.
He has: 675 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
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Nip it in the bud!