An Inside Look at Spam Requests

Vendors using the Scientist network have likely noticed an increase in spam requests over the past month. Our apologies for any wasted time reading these. Please simply archive them or click on the Mark as Spam button to remove them from your dashboard.

Scientist has spam filters in place that remove most inappropriate requests, so why the recent increase? Simply put, spammers continue to get more sophisticated. The most recent spam requests included paragraphs of real text that appear to be copied from Wikipedia.

What is spamdexing?

Although much spam is sent in an attempt to promote the sale of illegitimate products or get access to confidential information, the spam we are encountering is likely spamdexing. This type of spam is usually not malicious to the end user, as the main objective is to deliberately increase a website’s rankings in Internet search engines. Spammers like these often work for marketing firms that promise higher page ranks to their customers on Google or Bing.

Note – The spammers don’t apparently know that the spamdexing approach won’t work with the Scientist system since customer requests are privately secured and are not indexed publicly.

What are we doing about it?

We are upgrading our spam filters over the next month. This will involve using actual requests to “train” the spam filter to distinguish between real and fake requests.

We appreciate your patience and understanding! Please contact us if you have any questions or need assistance.