How to Fight Splogging

What is splogging? Sploggers target online personal journals—web logs or blogs. The result? Splogs, a combination of spam and blogs.

How does splogging work? The attacker, or splogger, uses automated tools to manipulate a blogger service to create thousands of fake blogs. The sploggers load these phony blogs with links to specific Web sites, like home mortgage, poker, and tobacco sites. By fooling the search-engine spiders that crawl the Web looking for commonly linked-to destinations, the sploggers manipulate search results, and boost traffic to their ads through the fake blog sites. And all those sites look like yours.

What are the dangers of splogging? Splogs and abused page rankings waste Internet users' time by directing them to web pages that have nothing to do with the words they're searching for. Sploggers make accessing information more difficult, saturate the hosting platforms, and discredit blogs.

What's worse, these fake blogs, created by unscrupulous authors, can contain links contaminated by spyware, Trojans, or even viruses. The risk of coming across an infected blog is still minimal, but there have already been reports of emails inviting the reader to click on a link to an infected blog.

Where can I learn more about protecting my blog and my computer from sploggers? Right here at ClubSymantec. Visit our article "How to Fight Splogging." It explains in more detail how you can demand accountability and diligence from hosting providers, demand additional barriers in the blog-creation process and protect your computer to protect against destructive viruses, worms, and Trojans.

Does Symantec have a product that can protect my personal information and my computer? Yes we do. Norton Internet Security 2006 is Symantec's most robust product to protect you against hackers, destructive viruses, gives you control over all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic. Install Norton Internet Security to fight sploggers, protect your blog site, and shield yourself.