Thursday, October 02, 2014

Return of the Russian Spam

A familiar pattern of false referrals has shown up in my September 2014 Blogger statistics making me wish there was a way to exile them to Siberia. Featuring a bevy of webpages originating from a site previously encountered, the spam is dedicated to parting you from your hard earned rubles.

While I don’t have any rubles to lose, precaution was taken in exploring the links. Firing up my trusty VirtualBox installation of Ubuntu 14 and using the TOR browser for anonymity I keep spam sites from looking at my real computer. Don’t try this at home unless you know what you are doing! It is best to never click on strange links.

detective01 Spam 01detective01 Spam 02

Oh the irony of the first spam to hit my blog. http: // detective01 . ru / offers private investigator services of all kinds and would be somebody to hire to find out where spam is coming from in Russia. There’s just the small issue of them being spammers. Like quite a bit of spam from that country, it is connected to St. Petersburg and in this particular case the agency is based there.

toretto-krest Spam 01

Next up is a site hosted at an address I recognized right away, apishops . ru seen in my last post on Russian spam. http: // toretto-krest . apishops . ru / is selling a replica of a cross worn by Vin Diesel in the Fast and the Furious film franchise, it probably is counterfeit merchandise that hasn’t been licensed. It is possible the cross is a legitimate replica, but I highly doubt it.

Notice the two very generic positive reviews on the lower right. There is good reason to doubt their being genuine.

tiefflieger-pro Spam 01tiefflieger-pro Spam 02

http: // tiefflieger-pro . ru / turns out to be a classic example of keyword and ad stuffing. The links are all to ads while many different words are scattered throughout the page that don’t always link to something associated to them. Instead they are simply words that have a high search rate occurrence on the Internet. This reflects a shotgun approach to getting seen by people using search engines and is the easiest dark hat SEO.

Check out all the large corporations and movies in that mass of words at the bottom. Every time one of those is clicked, the website owner makes money for relaying someone to an ad that may or may not be related. This is a simple and dirty way to make money.

Usually when batches of referral spam show up they are related in some way or another. Each one of these hit my blog four times just like previous waves of spam this year. Odds are the same service is being used to send out the false hits.

artefakct Spam 01artefakct Spam 02

So it was not shocking when http: // artefakct . com / showed up hawking replica jewelry. Scrolling down the page revealed the same graphic with Vin Diesel in it. Other movies and games with replicas include the Harry Potter series, Skyrim, Hunger Games, The Hobbit, Game of Thrones, and The Vampire Diaries which are all hot properties right now. There is one older property involving a famous ship standing out amongst them…

heart-oceans Spam 01

Well, would you look at that. Another apishops site and it has the same pendant from Titanic as the preceding spam. http : // heart-oceans . apishops . ru / is selling the bauble guaranteed to make your romance tragic. Seriously, if you want your relationship to end early, buy this for your gal. That way you too can have that sinking feeling when things go very bad.

cardiotwisterrs Spam 01ab-gymnics Spam 01

Sometimes I think recording all this referral spam is an exercise in futility since it never stops rolling in. The next two products being flogged at the gullible are just as effective at slimming the obese down.

http: // cardiotwisterrs . apishops . ru / promises weight loss and rock solid abs when you twist your life away. If it looks like you’ve seen it before, it was an infomercial making the rounds circa 2009 in North America. Cheaply made junk was the consensus of reviews at Amazon and other sites with very poor word of mouth. Maybe Russia is where the excess inventory ended up.

http: // ab-gymnics . apishops . ru / gives an easier and lazier way to get that six pack. Yeah, that ancient con of using electrical stimulation to make muscles convulse is still around. Never effective, it looks like as much fun as being poked with a stun gun.

avtoanimaciya Spam 01

Last, but not least, is the very interesting product being sold at http : // avtoanimaciya  . apishops . ru /. Fantasma OWL products are real and come out of Taiwan. They are ingenious LED wheel attachments that create full color animated images when tires are rolling. Aimed at the tuner crowd the line has expanded to bicycles as well. Expensive and flashy stuff costing $400 US per wheel, it is a toy for the wealthy.

Wait a second, I recognize those women at the lower right. The same generic reviews have been recycled. Imagine that.

I have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of apishops spam.

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