On Wed, 27 Feb 2008, Theo Van Dinter wrote:
>What's the trick here? Looks like a normal docs URL to me.
Poor terminology on my part. I am Only An Egg. :)
Is "exploit" a more correct term?
I meant that this is the latest way that spammers are taking advantage of
the trusting attitude most folks have towards a Google link.
A brief search shows this actually started at least a month ago:
http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/01/16/google-docs-spam/
My two URL samples were very similar to the four listed there.
>There's nothing unusual in the URL quoted.
This would be my ignorance showing (as I hinted in my previous post).
I have no personal experience with Google Docs.
Perhaps you (or anyone) would provide some samples of what legit ones look
like? Possibly the legit ones have a significantly different pattern, which
would assist in rule writing.
Based on what you've said, my gut feeling is this is one of the spammers'
best tricks, um... exploits. Fighting it is (potentially) harder than
blocking Blogspot, because it appears there is no unique owner ID, so they
can generate new unique URLs with ease. Please enlighten me if this isn't so.
>YMMV, of course, but I use Google Docs *all the time*, so see a lot of
>docs.google.com and spreadsheets.google.com URLs
VERY interesting! So, in a sense, this is one of the few (only?) spammer
exploits of Google that would hit Nerds in addition to Normals? I sent my
new rule off just to my non-Nerd users to run MassChecks - thanks to your
heads-up, I'll ask my Nerds to MC too.
That's what I love about this list - there's usually someone who has some
expert knowledge on the matter at hand. :)
>If someone is abusing the docs system and spamming people that way, report
>them to Google.
I commend your optimism. :)
- "Chip"
P.S. After a slow start, Uribl's fan-tastic new subsite listings are
producing excellent results. We auto-quarantine all Blogspot, Geocities,
etc emails, then re-run Uribl a few hours later, and are averaging about a
75% to 95% hit rate! Pretty good for such a new project. :)
