Bevan Slattery, of Pipe Networks, has posted this tonight on whirlpool attacking both major political parties and raising some very good points as to why Australia should not go with a FTTN (Fiber To The Node) network.

Whirlpool.net.au
Pipenetworks – ASX/Media Release

Looks like some idiot is doing a spam campaign trying to promote Ron Paul, some US candidate for congress. Personally I couldn’t give a rats ass about an election in The United States of America, but if a spammer is going to irritate me about this then can they please spam me about a candidate that matters for me in the Australian federal election.

Here is the message that they are spamming:

Hello Scott,

***************************************
We Need A Real President That Will Restore And Protect
Americans! Stop The War! Protect Our Borders!
*********VOTE RON PAUL 2008************

When accounting software provider, 2Clix launched into legal action over comments made about its products on the popular Australian broadband forum, Whirlpool the public backlash was quick and brutal, in what could be the final chapter of 2Clix’s very public history the company is on the verge of appointing an administrator to go into liquidation.

Company Who Sued Over Forum Comments Appoints Administrator

Don’t want to think about how to vote at the next Australian Federal Election, use the Vote-a-matic to make your choice. Simply select your choice from the multiple choice question provided and the Vote-a-matic will tell you who you should vote for based on your answers.

Vote-a-matic is is created by News.com.au

Whirlpool has received the Notice of Discontinuance in regards to the court case.

2Clix Claims Case Withdrawal
2Clix sues Whirlpool founder

It appears as though those wonderful spammers who brought use the Google “I’m feeling lucky” url abuse, have now found a new site to abuse, Verisign. Basically what the spammers are now doing is using the site search feature on Verisign‘s website to mask their urls. All they have to do is place their address at the end of “http://search.verisign.com/cs.html?url=http://www.spamsite.com/” and it is enough to mask their site. I don’t think it will be long before the phishers pick up on this one.

I’ve also noticed that some casino site is now using the Google “I’m feeling lucky” abuse with the search phrase “"million megabet from casino online" Magic Jackpot!”

My previous post about the Google abuse has been updated to reflect the new phrase.

UPDATE
Verisign have now blocked this re-direct, anyone trying to use it will now be redirected to http://search.verisign.com a Verisign site search. Thank You Versign for taking positive action.

I was browsing around randomly and I found a very strange government website in Australia, Toilet Map. At first I was skeptical as to if it was a real site but low and behold it is exactly what it says it is, a directory of public toilets in Australia.

Spammers of late have been attempting to hide their sites behind other innocent sites. The best little trick they have come up with of late is to use the Google feature “I’m Feeling Lucky”. This feature essentially takes you strait to the top site in your Google search request. The aim of this is to get around Spam blacklists and filters. Unfortunately this method relies on their page being the top result.

Example of spam:

Essentially what this does is an “I’m Feeling Lucky” search in Google for myvisameds global cart when the sucker (user) clicks on the Click Here they are ment to be taken to the site myvisameds.com. The site is supposedly trying to sell drugs like Viagra, Vicodin, Cialis, Valium, Soma, Xanax, Ultram, Ambien, Prozac, Meridia, Levitra, Zoloft, Nexium, and Propecia. The usual stuff you should have a prescription for and should go to your local chemist to buy. Not thats theres anything wrong with shopping online but seriously do you really know what your getting online.

This is very easy to change for the rest of use with legitimate pages as essentially all we need to is include their search phrase on our own page and boom if Google rates our site higher the spammers site, then the spam links go to our page instead.

Update
Since adding this article check out how many stupid people have been trapped by this spam because I’ve included the search phrase on my site. This gives you some idea of how thick people can be.

Update 2
ResearchBuzz post back on 21st January 2004 on how to hack a Google “I’m feeling Lucky” link.

Update 3 – Other Blogs Talking About This
SANS ISC – Spammers feeling lucky with Google
Justin-cook – Google Helping Spammers Get to Your Inbox
HypeFree – Google spam – aka I’m back
Rick’s Spam Digest – The Google Redirect Hall of Shame