Even though the user-submitted reviews on Amazon.com are moderated and cannot contain HTML or links, spammers are not deterred. While shopping for a bluetooth mouse I came across the following:

This is a great product, and you can get it, along with any other products on Amazon up to $500 Free! Participate in this special promotion and get a free $500 Amazon Gift Card at this web site: stuffnocost.com/amazon

The reviewer only has a single review to his name. However, Google turns up 100,000 entries for the body of the spam. Now, when someone can get a hundred grand of their spam onto such a big name social ecomerce site as Amazon.com, you know spam’s becoming a giant, pervasive problem.

If this concerns you, go read what Om Malik has to say about spam on Reddit, or Steve Rubel’s suggestions on spamming social online media.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 23rd, 2006 at 1:36 am and is tagged with steve rubel, pervasive problem, bluetooth mouse, google, amazon, reddit, malik, gift card, spam, shopping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

6 Responses to “Spammers Hit Amazon.com Reviews”

1. scot hacker’s foobar blog » Botnets on the Rampage says:

   11/17/2006 at 3:41 am

   [...] Amazon is having serious issues with spam, as is del.icio.us. Of course one would expect large services to be constantly hammered with spam, but if the largest and best-funded commercial entities on the web can’t keep spam off their public doorsteps, you know things are getting serious out there. [...]

   Reply
2. enemieslist.com: Spam News says:

   6/27/2006 at 4:12 pm

   Links Roundup…

   Spammers Hit Amazon.com ReviewsHeh. “you know spam’s becoming a huge, pervasive problem” – well, duh…….

   Reply
3. Emeralda says:

   6/25/2006 at 10:54 pm

   Hopefully Amazon gets it taken care of relatively quickly, as the reviews help when deciding on products many a time for me (and others I’m sure).

   This also brings to mind the new type of spam emails I am getting…the text of the email is attached as an image so the spam filters won’t see it as easily or at all.

   Reply
4. Omni says:

   6/25/2006 at 5:06 am

   Imagine if these morons put that effort into something USEFUL…

   Reply
5. SecuriTeam Blogs » Amazon Hit by Comment Spam says:

   6/24/2006 at 9:39 pm

   [...] I just came across this blog post by Elliott Back where he describes spam at amazon.com. Even though the user-submitted reviews on Amazon.com are moderated and cannot contain HTML or links, spammers are not deterred. While shopping for a bluetooth mouse I came across the following: [...]

   Reply
6. htor says:

   6/23/2006 at 11:12 pm

   Great site. found your profile on Blog Top Sites.

   -htor
   http://www.jjroth.com

   Reply