Are Whitelists Spam’s Best Friend?
It looks like spammers are using a tactic of exploiting your spam filters by incorporating known and reputable domain names in their comments. Pariah S. Burke calls this “Whitelist Spam Attacks”. In his blog, iampariah.com, he gives a very detailed and simple explanation of this mechanism which can potentially threat not only your blogs but your e-mail. He says:
Blog spammers are attacking blogs with their typical messages, but they have a new, ingenious, and potentially catastrophic trick. They’re incorporating links to legitimate, respectable domains into those attacks. The net result is that automated spam filters, even so-called “smart filters†like Dr. Dave’s Spam Karma plug-in system for WordPress-based blogs, are Blacklisting domains like CNN.com, IMDB.com, MacCentral.com, and dozens of others.
The anti-spam logic engine on one of my high search engine ranking sites, for example, Blacklists 15-25 respectable domains daily.
This is a threat that can be successfully fought if awareness is raised in the net. I invite you to read the rest of his article to better understand this phenomenon.
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