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| | A joe-job is a message that <em>looks</em> like spam, which is sent to damage the reputation of a web-site by making it look like the message was sent by the victim, who is the <strong>target</strong> of the spam, not the <strong>sender</strong>. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe-job. | | A joe-job is a message that <em>looks</em> like spam, which is sent to damage the reputation of a web-site by making it look like the message was sent by the victim, who is the <strong>target</strong> of the spam, not the <strong>sender</strong>. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe-job. |
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| − | It is not always easy to tell if a spam campaign is a joe-job, because sometimes one illegal domain will use a joe-job against another illegal domain. | + | It is wOT SCAM |
| − | So we cannot just decide by the nature of a spammed domain whether or not it is a joe-job.
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| − | Have a look at the WHOIS information of the domain and at its reputation.
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| − | Check the reputation with a tool like http://www.urlvoid.com.
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| − | If a domain has existed for several years, and has not been blacklisted, than it is <em>not</em> likely that it suddenly will start spamming.
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| − | The <em>style</em> of the spam message will be different from average spam.
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| − | Real spam will often use redirects and other tricks to make reporting more difficult.
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| − | Joe-jobs will display the name of the domain in a prominent way, to make reporting as easy as possible.
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| − | The joe-jobs will also often contain provoking text to irritate anti-spammers. That text can be vulgar words or ridiculous offers like heroin or Tomahawk-rockets.
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| − | Sometimes this will even be a message as unlikely as “we will send more spam”.
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| − | Most recent joe-jobs targeted domains in Eastern Europe, and those domains are in a local language. Such domains depend on local customers and sometimes on customers in nearby countries who share the language. When such a domain is world-wide spamvertized, it is clear that that is a joe-job. A forum on politics in Ukrainian language has nothing to gain from sending world-wide spam to people who can not even read the domain. Therefore, if you receive spam in an unfamiliar language for a domain that also uses unfamiliar language, you can be sure that it is a joe-job.
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| − | Joe-jobs are business. Criminal spammers who already have the control over large botnets, offer reputation damage on demand.
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| − | It is important to realize that the purpose of joe-jobs is to make as many anti-spammers as possible submit bad comments and ratings at SiteAdvisor and WoT, and report the spam to services like SpamCop and to Registrars.
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| − | This means that the spammers <strong>use</strong> anti-spammers to do the job they get paid for: damaging or even closing the targeted domain.
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| − | When reporting joe-jobs to SpamCop, only submit the full headers + from the body only the part <em>above</em> any link to websites, and add the text "<truncated>".
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| − | By reporting it in that way, SpamCop will investigate and notify the source of the message (usually an infected system, which is part of a botnet), but nothing is reported on the innocent victim of the joe-job.
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| − | Finally, when joe-jobs do not have the desired effect as quickly as the joe-job spammer (or the client they work for) wants, the available botnets sometimes are used for a DDOS attack so that the domains cannot be accessed, or have to pay for an expensive service that offers protection against a DDOS attack.
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| − | As always you should comment and rate a domain according to your own experience. Please read the recommendations for comments at: http://www.mywot.com/faq/website/scorecard#howtocomment.
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| − | No matter how much you may dislike a certain kind of domain, only comment/rate it for good reasons. The fact that a joe-job has made you aware of the existence of a domain is <em>not</em> a good reason for rating it or commenting on it. Do <strong>not</strong> let yourself be used by spammers!
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