Saturday
08Jul2006
Disney SPAM: Everything I Once Believed Forever Lost
Jul 8, 2006 at 04:46PM
Update: Thanks to the efforts of The Spam Huntress we now know that Disney.com is NOT responsible for the Referrer SPAM I speak of below.
I couldn't believe it. I'm still not sure I believe it. Walt Disney was a hero when I was a child. Every Sunday night I anxiously awaited The Wonderful World of Disney always knowing something wonderful was about to happen.
This time it wasn't so wonderful. This time Disney stabbed me in the back and neither Mickey Mouse, Pluto, or Zorro would be there to save me. Everything I once believed in is forever lost.
Remember coming home from school just in time to watch the Mickey Mouse Club? Remember the joy of seeing Tinkerbell fly across the screen her magic wand sparkling as she flew by? Remember the romance of Donald and Daisy Duck, and the lunacy of Donald's nephews? Remember Snow white, the 7 Dwarfs, Goofy, and Mary Poppins?
Well this time even a spoon full of sugar doesn't make this medicine go down. As a matter of fact, wait just a minute while I puke...
Of course all of you know what SPAM is, right? But there are other kinds of SPAM other than e-mail spam. A common tactic of porn sites, gambling sites, websites run by con artists and other ner-do-wells is something known to webmasters and some bloggers as referral spam.
The way referral spam works is like this: The scumbag webmaster in charge of getting traffic to a website sends out pings to other websites that show up as hits (page views) on the website server logs of their victims. Smart bloggers and webmasters often check their referral stats to see where their traffic is coming from in hopes of building relationships with other bloggers and webmasters that will encourage more traffic. After all, if you link to another website once there's a good chance a relationship might lead you to link to that site again. The problem lies in the fact that the hit the server log shows is in-fact not a human but a machine and as machines don't buy anything this sort of traffic reduces the value of every website they ping. After all, advertisers want websites read by people, not machines. If the commercial value of a website drops too low then sooner or later that website will be forced to close down and when giant companies like Disney start attacking the rest of us just to get a few million more readers then sooner or later even the value of the free blogging services like Blogger.com will be put out of business.
Fact is: If this sort of behavior continues long enough the Internet will be destroyed, dead, gone, never to be seen and enjoyed again. Disney.com could very well become the evil monster that destroyed the Internet.
But there is a way we can fight back, there is a way we can win, beat back the Disney Monster, and take back our Internet. Here's how it's done:
For starters: click on this link to Disney.com. If everyone who reads this post will do that one thing we'll soon have the attention of the Disney Monster. Let the monster know we're aiming for him.
If you're simply a reader of BloggingPoet.com then use the e-mail link directly below this post to e-mail this post to a friend. Have your friends forward it to as many people as they have e-mail addresses. You might even want to send it to your Congressional Represenative or Senator. Let them see the ugly face of the Disney Monster and maybe, just maybe they'll take up our cause.
If you're a blogger or webmaster then you already know what to do: link to this post and explain to your readers how important it is that the Disney Monster be destroyed. This isn't the Disney we once knew this is the Mister Hyde Disney whose attacks on the Internet probably have Walt rolling in his grave already.
Please, join me in fighting this beast before the beauty of the Internet is never more. Once the Disney Monster falls then the rest of the scumbags-- the porn sites, the scam sites, and the rest of the Internet lowlifes will be off and running and the Internet will have a story book ending. You know, the way Walt would have wanted it to end.
And finally, five days a week I allow my 10 year old niece, Laura, to play the games at Disney.com on the very computer I'm using to write this post because she doesn't have Internet access at home. Until the Disney Monster falls I'll not allow Laura to visit Disney.com-- ever. Do it for Laura even if you won't do it for Walt and me.
Update: I spent a little more time in my server logs to dig up the following info: the Disney.com referral spam came on July 8th., at 9:52 AM and 12:00 PM from the following IP Address: 72 232 9 234 and according to a search done at Whois.domaintools.com belongs to Layered Technologies of 18816 Preston Road, Suite #100, Dallas, Texas, 75252. A Google search for "Layered Technologies, Inc." produces several reports of their support of netharious activities.
I couldn't believe it. I'm still not sure I believe it. Walt Disney was a hero when I was a child. Every Sunday night I anxiously awaited The Wonderful World of Disney always knowing something wonderful was about to happen.
This time it wasn't so wonderful. This time Disney stabbed me in the back and neither Mickey Mouse, Pluto, or Zorro would be there to save me. Everything I once believed in is forever lost.
Remember coming home from school just in time to watch the Mickey Mouse Club? Remember the joy of seeing Tinkerbell fly across the screen her magic wand sparkling as she flew by? Remember the romance of Donald and Daisy Duck, and the lunacy of Donald's nephews? Remember Snow white, the 7 Dwarfs, Goofy, and Mary Poppins?
Well this time even a spoon full of sugar doesn't make this medicine go down. As a matter of fact, wait just a minute while I puke...
Of course all of you know what SPAM is, right? But there are other kinds of SPAM other than e-mail spam. A common tactic of porn sites, gambling sites, websites run by con artists and other ner-do-wells is something known to webmasters and some bloggers as referral spam.
The way referral spam works is like this: The scumbag webmaster in charge of getting traffic to a website sends out pings to other websites that show up as hits (page views) on the website server logs of their victims. Smart bloggers and webmasters often check their referral stats to see where their traffic is coming from in hopes of building relationships with other bloggers and webmasters that will encourage more traffic. After all, if you link to another website once there's a good chance a relationship might lead you to link to that site again. The problem lies in the fact that the hit the server log shows is in-fact not a human but a machine and as machines don't buy anything this sort of traffic reduces the value of every website they ping. After all, advertisers want websites read by people, not machines. If the commercial value of a website drops too low then sooner or later that website will be forced to close down and when giant companies like Disney start attacking the rest of us just to get a few million more readers then sooner or later even the value of the free blogging services like Blogger.com will be put out of business.
Fact is: If this sort of behavior continues long enough the Internet will be destroyed, dead, gone, never to be seen and enjoyed again. Disney.com could very well become the evil monster that destroyed the Internet.
But there is a way we can fight back, there is a way we can win, beat back the Disney Monster, and take back our Internet. Here's how it's done:
For starters: click on this link to Disney.com. If everyone who reads this post will do that one thing we'll soon have the attention of the Disney Monster. Let the monster know we're aiming for him.
If you're simply a reader of BloggingPoet.com then use the e-mail link directly below this post to e-mail this post to a friend. Have your friends forward it to as many people as they have e-mail addresses. You might even want to send it to your Congressional Represenative or Senator. Let them see the ugly face of the Disney Monster and maybe, just maybe they'll take up our cause.
If you're a blogger or webmaster then you already know what to do: link to this post and explain to your readers how important it is that the Disney Monster be destroyed. This isn't the Disney we once knew this is the Mister Hyde Disney whose attacks on the Internet probably have Walt rolling in his grave already.
Please, join me in fighting this beast before the beauty of the Internet is never more. Once the Disney Monster falls then the rest of the scumbags-- the porn sites, the scam sites, and the rest of the Internet lowlifes will be off and running and the Internet will have a story book ending. You know, the way Walt would have wanted it to end.
And finally, five days a week I allow my 10 year old niece, Laura, to play the games at Disney.com on the very computer I'm using to write this post because she doesn't have Internet access at home. Until the Disney Monster falls I'll not allow Laura to visit Disney.com-- ever. Do it for Laura even if you won't do it for Walt and me.
Update: I spent a little more time in my server logs to dig up the following info: the Disney.com referral spam came on July 8th., at 9:52 AM and 12:00 PM from the following IP Address: 72 232 9 234 and according to a search done at Whois.domaintools.com belongs to Layered Technologies of 18816 Preston Road, Suite #100, Dallas, Texas, 75252. A Google search for "Layered Technologies, Inc." produces several reports of their support of netharious activities.
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Reader Comments (6)
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2272.232.9.234%22
There aren't a lot yet, but there are some examples of spam for other sites from that IP Address.
And see this site:
http://www.rojisan.com/spam/archives/2005/04/
Roj says "I am forced into one conclusion, Layered Technologies is now a 'referrer spam host.'" From the rest of the post, I presume that means a host that is friendly to spammers, meaning they will not close an account for spamming. Many hosts will post rules about not spamming, but only actually care about email spamming. Some even ignore their own rules on email spamming and let their customers do whatever they want.
This site mentions the FBI has visited Layered Technologies to confiscate some servers in the past:
http://dead-donkey.com/modules/news/index.php?section=p2p&id=154
That wasn't because Layered Technology was doing anything illegal, but because sites they hosted were illegally sharing copyrighted material.
Disney I think would be careful not to do business with such a shady operation.
Not actually related to Layered Tech, but here is an example Spamhuntress found of invisible Disney spam links:
http://spamhuntress.com/2005/09/18/wiki-testing/
Meet the real offender, who has nothing to do with Disney:
http://spamhuntress.com/wiki/Somer
Layered Tech.
Plano Tx
For about a year I developed a way to find any ip, (true ip with map location address in less than 2 minutes.)
I saved enough material for about 7 months showing a few scam , porn, and of course virus sites that link to a false layered techonology host that goes to plano texas. Right to the house.
What I am seeing that there are alot of people who are using business names that are not theres running scams.
Legally crooked customers by wording because of certain paperwork, their not a crook.
There are not many scammers out there actually, just a small group working together in the same schemes.
Most likely Marketers and Techs who think there worth more in life so attack the average 80 percent to get there money. Most attackers are from America as well. Would you like to know who? :P