Spam

About all those -k.html backlinks to your website

Since the end of last year, most of my backlinks have originated from websites without any relevant connection to my content. However, they’re suspiciously similar, identified by the suffix of the referring URL being -k.html. Another distinct feature of the backlinks is that they’re only targeting (as in hotlinking) images.

.BUZZ TLD - How to swat a spammer

So .buzz is another one of those new gTLD’s that saw the light of day during ICANN’s “show me the money” run back in 2013. It’s managed by dotStrategy, and it’s advertised as a great domain name for generating buzz around your product.

.CYOU TLD - We See You Too Spammer

ShortDot SA, the top-level domain registry that brought us the infamous .ICU TLD is back with yet another useless domain extension. Say hello to .CYOU TLD, the “savvy and uber-cool domain”, at least according to ShortDot.

Outlook.com phishing campaign hosted on Google's Firebase platform

Earlier this week I discovered an interesting Outlook.com phishing mail that had been caught by the anti-spam measures we deploy for our e-mail customers. Well, to be fair, the phishing attack itself was not anything new or sophisticated, but the choice of hosting provider was rather interesting.

.ICU TLD spammers move to the .XYZ TLD

After noticing that the majority of the .ICU spam campaigns were drying up, I headed over to Namecheap to find out which gTLD was the next likely target for abuse. Well, what do you know, Namecheap was throwing out .XYZ domains for 1$ a pop.

.BEST TLD - Spam Like the Best

I’ve made the decision to go ahead and block another one of those pesky new gTLDs that are seemingly exclusively used by malicious actors. Email delivery from .best domains will no longer get past any spam filter under my control.

Blogger.com powered cryptocurrency scam

Over the last several months, I’ve seen a steady flow of spam emails containing only a single line of text encouraging recipients to visit a blogspot.com address. Should the recipient choose to follow the link, they would soon find themselves on a cryptocurrency scam site with amazing propositions.