Peter Kaminski

Speaking of wiki spam, I had a notable case this past day. Here's a crosspost from the KaminskiWiki ChangeLog:

The 202 domains in my WikiBlackList starting with "acne1care4skin.chat.ru" and ending with "wmutualmortgage.chat.ru" (and some related page-zeroing) are kind of interesting. They were posted from proxies or zombies:

• 63.245.23.249
• 64.43.1.59 smtp.meridianrail.com
• 64.164.190.2 adsl-64-164-190-2.sgvarc.org
• 68.48.242.62 pcp736510pcs.reston01.va.comcast.net
• 80.248.1.3
• 200.68.70.105 dns1.daweb.com.ar

Because the spammers are hosting the spamvertised domains on free hosting services that might host legitimate sites, too, I set my initial internal blacklist to just the subdomains. That worked for a day, until they started using other subdomains, so now I've switched to the root domains of the free hosting services, thereby squelching some potentially real links. Oh, well....

The couple of spamvertised domains I've visited redirect to searches to searchmeup.com. For instance, "wmutualmortgage.chat.ru" redirects to "www.searchmeup.com/search.php?aid=30820&q=washington+mutual+mortgage&said=mortgage".

It looks like somebody (affiliate #30820 in this case) is scamming the searchmeup affiliate program, umaxlogin.com. From the umaxlogin FAQ:

What is UmaxSearch?
UmaxSearch is a Pay Per Click search engine where every search result carries a bid value. Results are sorted descending by bid values that are set by advertisers."

How does UmaxSearch affiliate program work?
Traffic partners (webmasters) can send adult or non-adult traffic to UmaxSearch search engine and get 70% of the clicks that referred surfers initiate. UmaxSearch has a webmaster referral program which is recurring 5% of what referred webmasters make."

I sent email to the address given at umaxlogin (the searchmeup contact email address is on a domain that doesn't exist) saying, "The spammers are making you look either stupid or evil; you should make them stop."