User talk:A. B./spam

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Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I just updated the {{spamlink}} template and this one to include a link to DomainsDB.net, a useful tool for searching to see what other domains are hosted on a particular server.

Usage notes

Don't use "subst"
Don't use any uppercase letters in the template. {{spamlink|example.com}} is OK, but{{spamlink|Example.com}} may cause problems.

Sample

example.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Interpretation (purely my own opinions)
Linksearch en - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr:

Searches for links on some of the largest projects
- en: English Wikipedia
- meta: Meta-Wiki
- de: German Wikipedia
- fr : French Wikipedia
- simple: Simple English Wikipedia (included since many en spammers also hit it )
- wikt:en: English Wiktionary
- wikt:fr: French Wiktionary
Personally, I just use the en.wikipedia and simple search links, then rely on the Interwiki search (see below) for the rest (and I don't worry about Wiktionary -- perhaps I should).

Reports: Links on en - COIBot - Eagle's spam report search:

Pulls up the associated reports (if any):
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkSearch/example.com
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/example.com
- http://tools.wikimedia.de/~eagle/spamsearch/example.com
  - This last is Eagle 101's search of WT:SPAM, meta:Talk:Spamblacklist, MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist and associated archives.
  - It misses some meta archives because the archiving scheme there was subsequently changed. You can use the Google meta search (below) if you see a blacklist entry but can't find the associated discussion from the meta:Talk:Spamblacklist archive.

Interwiki link search, big: 20 - 57:

Uses Eagle101's search of the 20 or 57 largest Wikipedias. The 57-country search is sloowww, so I'll use the 20-language search "just to be sure" if I have no reason to believe the spammer is spamming beyond en.wikipedia. I'll also hit the Simple English link described above. I've found most British, North American, Australian and South Asian spammers usually stick to English. I've found spammers from Israel and most other European countries are much more likely to spam x-wiki, perhaps because they're more comfortable working in multiple languages; I always run the 57-wiki search on them. (Spammers from other regions don't seem to fit an established pattern.)
If the same article is spammed on many of the 57 biggest wikis, check to see if versions on smaller wikis have been hit, too. Sometimes a spammer hits an article, then just works his way down the left column of article versions in other languages. I'll do the same thing to find his links on wikis besides the top 57.
- Existence of a link on another Wikipedia does not automatically mean it was spammed x-wiki. Many smaller Wikipedias will import and translate sections of bigger articles on large Wikipedias link en, fr or de.

Linkwatcher: search:

A powerful tool, but temporarily disabled for now. Starting with links added in June 2007, you could enter a user name and pull up all the links they added on all 700+ Wikimedia projects. Alternately, you could enter a domain and find out which editors added it on which projects.

Wikipedia: en - fr - de:

Performs a search for the link name on the 3 largest Wikipedias, using our built-in mediocre MediaWiki search function. I use it to find to find the link in old Veinor pages on en.wikipedia (more on that below)

Google: search • Veinor pages • meta

Google searching the domain name often pulls up interesting results such as related domains. If the search pulls up too many results, I'll narrow it by adding "SEO" to the search. If that still gives >100 results (my Google preferences are set to display 100 results/page), I'll further add "forum OR sale" to narrow down to searching for the site owner talking about or selling domains on one of the SEO forums.
Veinor developed a tool to create a daily page listing links added each day and who had added them (example: User:Veinor/Link count/January 17, 2007). The user page lists any link added more than once; the user talk page lists all links added, even if only once that day. These pages span the first 5 months of 2007 before the tool went off-line.

The MediaWiki search and a Google search of the Veinor pages will each miss some pages, so I run both.

Meta: I Google search meta if I'm looking for archives missed by the spam discussion archive seach tool (above).

Yahoo: backlinks:

Sometimes I want to know what other domains link to my targetted spam domain in hopes of finding more domains owned by the same spammer. This tool lists backlinks.

Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.org • DomainsDB.net:

Domaintools.com gives useful information about a domain:
- Ownership.
  - Caveat -- this has to be interpreted judiciously
    - Some domain owners use privacy services such as Whois Guard, Privacyprotect.org Domains by Proxy, etc.
    - Others just lie/obfuscate. Compare the e-mail addresses in this example of two domains owned by the same spammer:[1],[2]. Furthermore, the NYC address is bogus as is the phone number. Common ownership in this case was confirmed by Google Adsense ID, common spammer IPs and that e-mail address.
    - Usually only the first name and address is relevant; other entries such as technical contacts refer to the hosting service, not the spammer (unless the spammer is operating his own server).
    - If a domain is sold, Domaintools' ownership records may lag by a few days or weeks. (Since $$$'s involved, Google Adsense IDs usually change immediately).
  - Uses:
    - If not hidden, this can confirm ownership
    - I often search on a phone number, an address, a company name, an e-mail address or a contact's name to try to find additional domains.
- "Whois history": if the date registered is 7 July 2006, you know you don't have to search edit histories earlier than that data
- "Reverse IP": Links to a list of other domains using that server IP. Unless you pay $, you only get 3 free domains, but sometimes that's helpful. If you see only 10 domains hosted at that IP, then they may all be the spammer's (example:[3][4]); if there are 2,722 domains, they're probably not ([5][6])
- A convenience link to the domain's AboutUs.org article (see below)
AboutUs.org links to an SEO directory page about the domain. Initially these are compiled by the directory's bot but can be subsequently edited, wiki-style, by others using a slightly modified MediaWiki interface.
- Caveats:
  - The "Related Domains" section gives the bot's best guess as to domains that are related. Accuracy ranges from 5% to 100%. A major factor appears to be the pattern of inbound and outbound links a site has, but there seem to be other factors as well. You'll often see sites like Yahoo, Google and Wikipedia in the list.
  - The site ownership information is not as up-to-date as DomainTools' (you can look at the AboutUs page's edit history to see when it was last updated).
- Uses:
  - Despite its imperfect accuracy, the "Related Domains" section is a powerful tool for finding additional commonly-owned domains even if it doesn't prove ownership.
  - Page edit history: occasionally, a site-owner may edit his entry, in which case you can check his contributions to see what other pages he's editing. Also, it's also worth checking that IP or user name on Wikipedia -- often they're used there too. Interestingly, you'll also note edits where spammers added links to their competitors AboutUs.org pages (some things are universal I suppose).
  - "What links here" (sometimes hidden in a column on the right and accessed by clicking on "useful links"): This may give additional names besides those listed in "Related Domains". The same caveats apply.
DomainsDB.net is a new feature for this template. Clicking this link takes you to a page for the IP where the domain is hosted (Example). There you'll see an entry labelled "Reverse IP:" saying something like "there are -1 domains on this IP, click here to get them all". Even if it just says "1 domain", click it anyway to pull up a list (Example). (Don't ask me why it says "1 domain" even when there are more).
- Caveat: these other domains may not be spam domains -- they may just be hosted by the same big hosting company (Example)

--A. B. ^(talk) 19:53, 9 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

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