Got hammered last night with trackback spam (about 500 or so) from jerks affiliated with Empire Poker. I fired off an email to their abuse department:
Dear Sirs,
If your computer operators do not stop spamming the comments section and the trackback pings of my website, I am going to be force to report you to whatever gaming commissions, better business bureaus, or other authorities I see fit in order to stop the obnoxious and destructive behavior.
I have also spent two hours de-spamming my website. If you do not cease and desist, I am going to begin submitting invoices for the labor required to remove the spam. I think a fee of $200.00 per hour for this type of consulting work is not out of line.
Regards,
John Cole
https://balloon-juice.com
They responded almost immediately:
Dear John,
Thank you for contacting us.
With regards to your concern, please be informed that, we thank you for taking your time out to bring to our attention about the Affiliate spamming.
EmpirePoker.com strictly does not encourage incorrect marketing methods that would cause inconvenience to others, especially on public forums.
We have written to the affiliate about this asking for an explanation and our affiliate department is monitoring their affiliate account. Please rest assured that this would not happen again.
We apologize for the inconvenience caused to you in this regards and we appreciate you playing an active role in helping us resolve this issue.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Care Department at any time. We are here 24/7 to assist you via email.
Thank you for choosing us as your online gaming site!
Jaganmohan
Poker Customer Care
We shall see what happens.
Mark
I got hammered last night from a gaming site too. Luckily MT blacklist can remove trackback spam too.
S.W. Anderson
I put slightly more faith in the tooth fairy and Bush job-creation boasts than in spammers’ promises to stop doing what they do.
If only we could round them up and trade them to Zarqawi for innocent captives.
Jim Treacher
I got hit with trackback spam a couple weeks ago. This blogger has been going after these guys:
http://www.annelisabeth.com/blog/
A lot of it is too technical for me, but it sounds like a lot of it is coming from Bulgaria and Russia.
Gregory Markle
What will happen, at best, is that the next time they attack it will be using a different URL…I’ve probably eliminated about 2000 such Trackback spams over the past 6 months and all they do is is keep changing the URL to keep ahead of the blacklist.
At this point the most you can do is the make sure you have MT set to mail you a notice for all Trackbacks and comments and monitor them so that you catch them early.
The author of MT-Blacklist has special instructions up concerning this plague: http://www.jayallen.org/comment_spam/2004/07/trackback_spamming
Scott Chaffin
Just sayin here…
Emp1re is a legitimate p0ker room, and wouldn’t spam you. They have an affiliate program that pays people for new signups (I’m one, somewhere), though, and that’s who’s doing the spamming. Their TOS are pretty stiff and your spammer is probably long gone from the program. They don’t screw around with that kind of stuff.
Gregory Markle
Whether or not the company advertised is legitimate is irrelevant. Affiliate programs are a HUGE cause of spam…trackback, comment, e-mail, or wherever. Affiliates use spam techniques to get links with their affiliate info to as many people as possible and the low cost of mass e-mailing and other such dissemination techniques is very attractive to them.
The program is the problem, not the spammer. They need to hire LEGITIMATE advertising services who ONLY place ads where they are desired…not just any jackass who wants to make a quick buck.
Scott Chaffin
Affiliate programs are a great way to build a business. See “Mary Kay.” They aren’t de facto evil.
The inherent problem is internet abuse, and as always, it needs to be stopped at the source — the abuser’s provider. But we’re not much closer to that than we ever have been.
ProbablyObDisclaimer: I’m not defending Empire or p0ker spammers. Just noticed the name, and am generatlly interested in bidness.