In today's world, everyone who is anyone has a blog uses RSS to distribute information. But many of us know all too well that a good thing regarding the development of the internet is often accompanied by a bad thing - and yes, you guessed it, it's spam. It is everywhere you go, and there is no escaping it. It appears in your inbox, it pops up in your browser, it gets mailed through your door offering you 'great deals' that are never really great or in fact even deals; what's more, it now even calls you during dinner. But if you're a blogger or website owner who likes to distribute content to the world via RSS, a new form of spam might strike upon you - Really Simple Spam, otherwise known as RSS Spam.
It has been brewing in the minds of spammers for some time now. It seems they've been letting the blogging scene progress to the biggest thing on the net, just waiting to strike aggressively and reap the benefits of others' misfortunes. And, alas, they've finally done it.
Basically, Really Simple Spam is just our 'hip' way of describing spam in RSS (Really Simple Syndication). You've probably already experienced Really Simple Spam if you are a regular internet user, as it is most often found in blogs which were created solely to manipulate search engine rankings. People have been creating keyword rich spam blogs and then marketing their feeds so that they appear in the RSS search engines, such as Google News. But why? The reason is that RSS spammers can make money when an unsuspecting user clicks through to the website and then is bombarded with advertisement and pop-ups.
But RSS spammers are 'smarter than the average bear'; they've found a bombing source to exploit, and it comes in the form of podcasts. For all who are unaware of what a podcast is, it is basically a multimedia file distributed over the net using syndication feeds such as RSS - what a coincidence.
The RSS spammers create a feed which looks appealing to a user, and when the user clicks on the link thinking they are about to download the latest podcast, what they really get is spam. It can come in many forms, such as a download.exe dialler, malware and the usual 'naughty' stuff that is associated with spam. An experienced internet user would identify this straight away and cancel the transfer; but a novice user may not have the knowledge to understand what the threats are - mainly, spyware or a virus.
At the moment, RSS spam only exists on a small scale, but once the spammers realise that there are ways of manipulating RSS feeds further, they will pounce. Developers will then try to find a way of combating RSS spam just as they did with 'junk e-mail'. But I wouldn't let this put you off creating RSS feeds; they are a great way of distributing information and content if you have control of your feed. Just beware when you are searching the internet for news stories; you could end up a victim of Really Simple Spam.
