It seems spammers are getting a little web 2.0 in their design.
The last few days I’ve had the one below quite a few times. Large fonts, rounded corners, shiny icons…. Almost (not quite) looks like something from a collection of Web 2.0 logos.
About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
I’ve noticed the same — the worst spam seems to come from people who are new to spamming, but the pros are really making it readable and even “desirable” to click through just because of the professional feel.
Scares me to think that they may have found new ways to make a buck off by legitimatizing their look, even if the content of the end result is spam.
I have also noticed this one in my gmail’s spam folder. I only go in the spam folder when I’m bored though.
This c**p generally doesn’t get past me – I never load images directly from an email (many images contain tracking codes) – it often gets filtered – and the rest, well to be blunt I’m not interested in any of those products. Ginseng will do for me, if you catch my drift :)
Ahem, anyway…
The worst spam for me is blog spam because you have to check some of the fith people write about (I can’t simply mark all as spam because occasionally new users’ first comments are caught in the spam folder)
I never click on them though.
Also I’m not sure how Web 2.0 this really is – it’s just some spammers have worked out how to use their cracked copies of Photoshop a little better.
very true Andy
Ehmmm… the spam image “spams” your layout on my IE 6.0. The image is only shown after the sidebar which leaves a huge white space on your page.
But nice content anway. Get those pictures for quite a while now as well.
I’ve already seen that crap a few hundred times. Did I really have to see it again? :)
Ehmmmm….. the spam image “spams” your layout on my IE 6.0. It leaves a huge white spaces and is shown only after the sidebar. Unbelievable what they can do these days with spam! :-)
A great tool for spammers would be fonts with wrongly assigned letters.
I go to sleep now.
I get the same as Dainiel.
One question: What makes spammers like this think that anyone will actually look at this when it is obviously out of context and plainly spam?
I’ve just recently launched my own blof for the community I live in and dread to think of what I may have to filter out …
Nice site by the way Darren, I’ve learned a lot from you.
Sorry, I haven’t started a blof – it’s actually a BLOG.
I just noticed something else (sorry to hog the comments) but i think the spammers were trying to make their ads look like your text link ads that appears below the post (it’s the same colours and borders etc.).
Very crafty!!
I’ve got a few search strings I monitor that are beginning to fill with spam blogs. It really is a tough thing to create the right search term that captures what you want without being too broad. I’ve noticed this a lot in my Technorati searches.
I search mostly travel/tourism type stuff and there are a handful of ‘offenders’ in lodging that I see in my area. Are they knowingly participating in these spam blogs? The real surprise is that they could even be this ‘saavy’ in their marketing. Is it possible to buy into spam networks? I was tempted to contact one business since I deal with them as a client in another capacity, but is it my place to castigate them? I hate Spam.
On an unrelated note, my son is doing a report on Hawaii. They eat 5.5 cans of Spam per/person/year. Yummy.
Weird. I opened my mailbox this morning and while deleting the spam I noticed I’ve received a couple of the spam messages you describe, exactly the same.
the spam image “spams” your layout on my IE 6.0. It leaves a huge white spaces and is shown only after the sidebar.
I added this page to my Stumbleupon account
I hate spammers, many trick such as use machine or robots to spam email inbox, they makes me angry. Thanks for your tips darren