Spam blog posts take over GenealogyWise

GenealogyWise is a reallydynamic and useful social networking site for genealogists.GenealogyWise is part of FamilyLink which if you keep tracing backthrough links, is basically Paul Allen and his staff who also runWorldVitalRecords and a lot more. Many of the members post all or partof their own blogs on the GenealogyWise blog posts. Lately, the blogposts coming through Google Reader have been hijacked by spam drugsellers. My Google Reader currently has six posts which appear to befrom "Everyone's Blog Posts - Genealogy Wise" but are offers to buydrugs online. The poster in one case is identified as "belkennett3985."Clicking on show original item takes you to the GenealogyWise main page.A Google search on the poster shows that the profile on Genealogy Wisedated from one hour before.

What is happening is that spammersare using GenealogyWise to hijack the blog posting network and use thereaders to send out spam to users to of the blog posts. When you followthe links back to GenealogyWise the profile cannot be found, because itis being changed by the spammer to use another profile.

If thiscontinues, I may have to disconnect from reading GenealogyWise just totake control of my Reader account again.

James-

Sorry for the duplication, but here is what we are doing to stop the blog post spam.

Because GenealogyWise is a social network that encourages member participation we do have occasional problems with people who join GenealogyWise for the sole purpose to spam members.

Please know that as soon as we see this activity we terminate the membership of the spammer immediately. Keeping spammers of off GenealogyWise is important to me and I take it very seriously.

Because of the recent use of the Blog posts as a means to spam the membership we are going to start, as of today, putting a delay on blog posts so that they must be approved by us before they are posted. This will allow us to delete spamming blog posts before the can be posted to the homepage.

For those who use the blog feature on GenealogyWise the only change you will notice is that you will not see your posting appear instantly after you push the "Publish Post" button. There will be a delay until we get the message about the post and can approve it.

I'm sorry for any inconvenience to our regular genealogy bloggers who provide great information to our community. We are hoping that this will help curtail the incidences of spamming on the site.

Thank you for your help with this. If you have questions you are more than welcome to email me at gortega@familylink.com or message me on my GenealogyWise page.

Gena Philibert Ortega, Community Manager
GenealogyWise

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Comments

Heather Wilkinson Rojo April 8, 2010 at 11:06am

James, I reported this spam this morning and I received this note from Gena Philibert Ortega
I received your Report an Issue about the recent spam on the blogs. Because anyone can join GenealogyWise, we do get spammers. We do terminate their membership as soon as we see them and delete their blog postings. Please note the following posting I made today in answer to the spamming we have been receiving on the blogs: (link didn't work)
Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.
Gena Philibert Ortega, Community Manager
GenealogyWise"
Gena Philibert Ortega April 8, 2010 at 10:29am

James-

Sorry for the duplication, but here is what we are doing to stop the blog post spam.

Because GenealogyWise is a social network that encourages member participation we do have occasional problems with people who join GenealogyWise for the sole purpose to spam members.

Please know that as soon as we see this activity we terminate the membership of the spammer immediately. Keeping spammers of off GenealogyWise is important to me and I take it very seriously.

Because of the recent use of the Blog posts as a means to spam the membership we are going to start, as of today, putting a delay on blog posts so that they must be approved by us before they are posted. This will allow us to delete spamming blog posts before the can be posted to the homepage.

For those who use the blog feature on GenealogyWise the only change you will notice is that you will not see your posting appear instantly after you push the "Publish Post" button. There will be a delay until we get the message about the post and can approve it.

I'm sorry for any inconvenience to our regular genealogy bloggers who provide great information to our community. We are hoping that this will help curtail the incidences of spamming on the site.

Thank you for your help with this. If you have questions you are more than welcome to email me at gortega@familylink.com or message me on my GenealogyWise page.

Gena Philibert Ortega, Community Manager
GenealogyWise

This reply was deleted.