blogspam assault

A couple of hours ago, the five most recent posts here all got identical blogspam comments advertising cheap -- and probably counterfeit -- luxury shoes and handbags. That really pissed me off, as you might imagine, so I went and looked up the WHOIS data for the domains mentioned in the spam. The domain contact info for all of them (assuming this info is correct) lists locations around Southern China. I don't know if they're all part of the same operation, or whether they banded together to flood the interwebs with blogspam. Either way, I felt a little name and shame was in order.

The spam heavily touts shoes allegedly "by" Christian Louboutin, a French designer best known for extreme stiletto heels. I assume the spammer's not selling the real thing, since the advertised prices run between 50% and 90% off what the real ones generally go for. So it's not hard to imagine that somewhere in South China there's a sweatshop full of six year olds working night and day churning these things out, or else.

My usual argument about spammers is that you don't want to do business with them because that just encourages them and causes more spam. I think that's a no-brainer. And they also shouldn't be rewarded for trademark infringement, which is also a no-brainer. And the fact that they're spamming to advertise goods that are illegal to import into the US (and which are seized and destroyed by the Feds when discovered) should be a clear sign that you don't want to give your credit card number or other personal details to these guys. Again, duh.

Beyond that (and call me clueless and male if you like), it seems to me that you especially don't want to buy cheap knockoff stiletto heels, more than most things. If you buy a $10 fake Rolex from a guy in Times Square, the worst that can happen is that it doesn't tell time properly, or maybe it turns your wrist green. Well, or you become the butt of cruel jokes when everyone except you can tell it's not a real Rolex. (I've seen this, btw.) But suppose the kid who made your imitation Christian Louboutins was having a bad day -- too busy crying and missing her parents, perhaps -- and didn't glue a heel on quite right, and it pops off while you're making your grand entrance at a party. Thud! And if you get hurt in the fall, good luck finding someone to sue.

I've run across at least one other blogger annoyed by the ongoing spam assault. He suggests that people go after them in small claims court en masse, as a sort of legal DDOS attack. I'm not inclined to do that myself, since I doubt it would do any good, and I'm not sure how I'd show monetary losses or emotional distress -- it hasn't cost me anything, and I cheerfully admit that outing the occasional spammer for sport is kind of fun. Possibly small claims courts work differently in Canada, making this strategy worth pursuing there. I dunno.

Which brings us to today's Rogues' Gallery. For all of the domain contacts, I made the mail addresses into mailto links, to guarantee that any address-harvesting spambots that visit here will be sure to notice them. That seems only fair, don't you think?

FWIW, according to the Wikipedia article on Chinese phone numbers, it looks like all but one of the numbers shown here are mobile phones. Any 11-digit phone number starting with '1' is a mobile phone, apparently. As for the remaining one, you're supposed to drop the leading '0' if calling from outside China, apparently. The rest of the number starts with "27", which really is the prefix for the city of Wuhan. So that may indicate the domain info is accurate, or at least not totally bogus. Oh, and the country code for China is 86, and in the US you dial 011 first when making an international call, i.e. "011 86 27xxxxxxxx", where the 8 x's are the digits of a number in Wuhan, for example. Again, FWIW.

So here's the list:

• christianlouboutinmy.com
  xiao, dongdong 9312521@qq.com
  xingfulu64#
  nanyang, henan 473000
  China
  13849792338
  
  
• handbagcom.com
  ma, zhuzhu xinzhogndian@gmail.com
  huayuanlu 20hao
  wuhan, hubei 430000
  China
  02785879032
  
  
• bootsluxury.com
  zhao, dong zhaodong09@tom.com
  no.40 luzhou road
  fuzhou, fujian 351100
  China
  13203659862
  
  
• handbagsboots.com
  dong, lin guandong230@yahoo.com
  9# sanyu jie
  guangzhou, guangdong 510000
  China
  15963265910
  
  
• eurluxury.com
  zhao, dongdong handbags521@tom.com
  num 4 luzhou road
  fuzhou, fujian 350011
  China
  +86.13203659862
  
  
• bootsluxury.com
  zhao, dong zhaodong09@tom.com
  no.40 luzhou road
  fuzhou, fujian 351100
  China
  13203659862
  
  
• handbagspop.com
  wei, chen weiwei238@yahoo.com.cn
  no.32 leuo road
  dongguan, guangdong 512000
  China
  15126365980
  

Actually it turns out I have a partial IP address for the spammer too. Usually they're careful not to leave tracks like this. If I was using the paid version of Sitemeter, I might have their full IP; as it is, I've got "174.37.24.#", from -- you guessed it -- somewhere in China. It looks like he or she showed up via the Next Blog button (believe it or not) and proceeded to spam all the posts on the front page. And then, most likely, hit Next Blog again and went off to spam someone else. The bastard.