Anything Buying Guide

You're driving in your car and you approach a busy intersection. There are people standing in the street holding boxes that say "Donate to keep our maintenance workers employed." As a generous person, you drop some money in the box. While waiting at the stoplight, you see a truck pull up across the street. Several men, wearing the same uniform as the money collectors, start dumping garbage all over the sidewalk and the street. "Hey!" you yell at the collector nearest you. "What are they doing?"

"They're keeping the maintenance workers employed!"

Sound farfetched? Hardly! This is exactly what's going on all over the Internet today. And you're probably donating on a regular basis. "How?" I hear you ask. I'm glad you inquired.

You're driving down the Internet, searching for the meaning of life. You arrive at a Web page and look around for some answers. Strangely, there is really nothing helpful here, but there are LOTS of links to other places. Some of the links have names that look like they could be helpful. So, in hopes of some inspiration, you click on one of them.

"KaCHING!" If you listen closely, you'll hear the sound of money changing hands. You've just made a donation to a spammer. This is not 'email spam', which is complex (to manage), illegal and at times bears malware. No, this is 'search spam', a simple, legal, non-infectious scheme to make money from Google ads. Here's how it works:

1. Get a reasonable-sounding domain name that refers to a subject of legitimate interest. For example, www.how-to-sell-your-home-without-a-real-estate-agent.com
2. Create a Google AdSense account, which allows you to place 'relevant' Google text ads on your Web site. For the above example site, you would place real estate ads on your site.
3. Put a title and a few words about real estate on your web site, plus the instructions for Google to place ads. You can also put links to your other spam sites, to keep the visitor occupied until he clicks on a paying ad.
4. Sit back and watch the cash come in. Visitors come from search engines looking for, say, real estate advice. When they find nothing, they will click on an ad, hoping to go to a real site. A spam site like this one might only make $10 or $20 a month, but multiply that by 10,000 Web sites and you've got an income.

Here's how much of a sweat shop industry this has become: According to Rich Skrenta of the anti-spam search engine blekko,

Researchers recently reviewed job postings [at Mechanical Turk] and found that 41 percent of all jobs offered over a two month period were aimed at recruiting workers to create spam. Most of these jobs offered folks a measly dollar a page. Some paid as little as 5 cents.

The result? Slower, more expensive Internet, lots of wasted energy (running spam servers), huge amounts of wasted time (yours), and rich sleazeballs. Plus a powerful incentive for government taxes, regulations and general intervention, which would certainly degrade the Internet.

Here's what you can do to help.

1. Be aware of the problem. Know what a spam site looks like (they are quite obvious).
2. For reduced-spam surfing, try the blekko search engine at www.blekko.com
3. Think before clicking on any text ad. Every time you do, you encourage more of them, and they're uuuuugggly!
4. As always, NEVER buy anything from a spam email or a spam Web site.
5. Tell your friends.

can prevent spam!