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Excerpt: … for spammers, anyway. Upgrading WordPress often might just help!

On the other hand, you could still wake up and find out your blog looks like this after a zero-day attack —

That's probably a bad thing. But, in fact, many of us in the blogosphere have enjoyed this particular problem.

And it's not quite as much fun as the blue pill.

In the worst case, it's not just spam, it's badware or viruses. And then Google won't want to cohabit with you ever again.

Well, you'r…

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Excerpt: At least not necessarily …

Anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty would notice the following highlighted copyright headers in the widely circulated "embarrassment" that everyone (even those who can't write a lick of C/C++ or ASM) criticized.

Unfortunately, too many people blame Microsoft without actually thinking. Freescale may have actually been caught red-handed and with its pants down. Notably, the bug did not affect the Zune models above 30GB. So Freescale knew about the …

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Excerpt: You thought cheap webhosting was a bargain. Maybe … but bad webhosting isn't just a bummer — it can get you delisted, added to badware lists, etc.

And it doesn't have to be your fault (directly, anyway).

Use IX Web Hosting | ixwebhosting.com web hosting at your own risk. One day you might just get hacked and/or defaced. Even worse, you might be — courtesy of some Turkish hacker — installing malware on users' computers by proxy. The hackers seem to be pretty good…

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Excerpt: If shoemoney can write how to stop spam, I can write how they're keeping it coming!  Don't get me wrong.  I hate spam — except when it makes me laugh or impresses me.  And as the days go by and more people read this blog, I've noticed that an increasing number of spammers are paying their respects as well. I've noticed a few things about the successful ones, though.  And I'm posting the best approaches I've seen so white hat bloggers can, 'ahem, u…

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Excerpt: I'm a sinner!  I violate Google's TOS daily.  But the guy standing next to me on Yom Kippur made me look like Jill Whalen!  He was a spammer — and a pretty devious one at that.  Some of it was muffled by the sounds of unfed stomachs growling for forgiveness, but I managed to hear these 5 things he said:1. I'm sorry, my Lord, for using 1000s of vulnerable .edus as parasites to promote Viagra, a drug that increases the pleasure and frequency of illicit carnal sin. …

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Excerpt: The NY Bar has a new set of rules for lawyers floating around.  Apparently, they got wind of the blatant cheeseball spamming lawyers are employing to solicit clients on the internet.  I'd cite examples, but they'd probably get me sued :(  They responded in spades, though: 1. "… content …shall be predominantly informational, and shall be designed to increase public awareness of situations in which the need for legal services may arise … "  In other word…

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Excerpt: It's now pretty clear that companies must monitor their online reputations.  It's also not such a great idea to tick off bloggers in the first place.  News is likely to spread, and fellow bloggers may send links freely.  Reporting something stupid is great link bait!  As a result, a small company may suddenly find flaming on page 1 of the SERPs for brand-related queries.  "Fixing" that can be frustrating.  Let's take a look at some blatant spam…

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Excerpt: I'm friendly with some spammers.  Most of them are pretty nice guys.  I don't spam, and I never will — but I keep in touch. Since most spammers are really just out to make a buck and not hurt anyone, I would never expect them to mock and laugh at a spam victim.  But sadly, that's exactly what "white hat" Rand Fishkin and the "professionals" at SEOmoz did.Let's have a look:G-man writes on their blog:"you've got to understand what I curr…