What should I do about a spamming website?

November 28, 2006 4:56 PM

Should I do anything about a site advertising via spam?

I've found a site (that sells stuff) which seems to advertise heavily by spam. Simply Googling its URL reveals a ton of linkspam, blogspam, wikispam, etc. It's an otherwise legit site, and all the spam seems to be human-written, not posted by spambots, but it's still spam.

Is there anything I can, or should, do?

posted by Mwongozi to computers & internet (6 comments total)

You make it sound like this is a rare thing :-)

Can you explain what makes this particular site worthy of your attention as opposed to all the other spammers?

Also, is there some reason to believe that the people you'd report the to are not already aware of the situation?
posted by winston at 5:13 PM on November 28, 2006

If you've got the original spam email, submit full headers and content to Spamcop. Not only will they know to whom you should complain for both the email and the web hosting, but they'll do the complaining for you.
posted by thanotopsis at 5:18 PM on November 28, 2006

If the site is spamming by e-mail, then unfortunately I haven't received one. The guy is spamming other people's blogs, forums, and wikis though.

Why is this site worthy? Because the spammer has been called out on a few sites, and the spammer actually bothered to respond - being generally hostile and antagonistic.

He deserves to be taken down. :)
posted by Mwongozi at 5:21 PM on November 28, 2006

If the site is spamming by e-mail, then unfortunately I haven't received one. The guy is spamming other people's blogs, forums, and wikis though.

If you're the admin for one of these sites, then you can do the following:

1) Isolate a post of his in a particular URL.

2) Go to Spamcop, and through their interface, type in his advertised URL. The reason I suggest them rather than going through the classical route of a WHOIS query is that they'll be able to tell you, through statistics, the right people to contact. If the upstream hosting provider is nonresponsive to complaints, they'll tell you that as well.

3) Use the email address they've provided, and fire off an email to the authorities. If you're the only one to complain, he'll get a slap on the wrist (an emailed warning reminding him of the host's Acceptable Use Policy). If you're one among many, and the host is responsive to complaints, the site will go down.
posted by thanotopsis at 5:30 PM on November 28, 2006

Complain to the host. They might take it down, but then he might just go to some host in China, which will not bother to respond to such complaints.

Sadly, it's hardly worth the effort anymore. :-(
posted by drstein at 5:31 PM on November 28, 2006

I would file a report here which may or may not lead to Google delisting them.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:23 PM on November 28, 2006