Google Docs Being Used for Spam
January 17th, 2007
The spammers have infiltrated google documents. The spammers have infiltrated google documents. Calling Matt Cutts. Calling Matt Cutts.
Here’s a google search to prove it:
site:docs.google.com inurl:view
Amost nothing but evil links in there.
My speculation is that spammers are hoping that the google spider will assume that google proper (with it’s uber-high PR) is linking to their sites.
January 17th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Here’s my entry for understatement of the year:
I HATE SPAMMERS!
January 17th, 2007 at 11:43 am
[…] As initially written by David Kirk of Tech-Recipes, it looks like spammers have figured out a way to get their “message” into Google by using Google Docs & Spreadsheets. […]
January 31st, 2007 at 6:21 am
As of today I notice that Google have added a new robots.txt to docs.google.com - they have banned all pages within the subdomain from being crawled!
January 31st, 2007 at 7:51 am
Thanks, Dave! Great information. Will blog about the update soon.
January 31st, 2007 at 8:09 am
[…] I had previously reported that people were using google docs for spam. I had crafted a google search that highlighted the spammers. […]
February 8th, 2007 at 9:26 am
[…] Update: I’ve found a similar post with the same title by David Kirk, and he thinks this has something to do with PR and SEO. […]
January 30th, 2008 at 6:08 am
This is very interesting. I ran some test in our labs (Commtouch Labs) and didn’t find any spam outbreaks with Google docs.
Nevertheless, i do believe that it still could be used to pass conventional anti-spam systems, exploiting the Google docs credibility as a link in an email.
May 27th, 2008 at 9:26 am
[…] this new type of spam unexpected? No. It was blogged about as early as Jan. 2007 (no, that’s not a typo in the year). Was it a false alarm in 2007? Not sure, but if there was […]