Microsoft has released a report detailing their method of seeking out and exposing fake web pages. These are those pages you sometimes are re-directed to through a convoluted series of false-doorways and the like, which consist only of advertising and content which is usually cut and pasted from ‘real’ web pages. Interestingly, Microsoft’s findings show that most of these junk pages come from just two web hosts, and almost 70% of the advertising come from only 3 advertising syndicators. Microsoft is hoping that this new method of locating spam pages, by as they say ‘following the money’ a process which apparently traces where the click-throughs are taking people then finding what advertising is on the page.  The paper posits that large advertisers are the ones actually fueling the spam industry, the spammers themselves develop new ways to distribute the ads, and the advertisers foot the bill.

By using a tool called fiddler, those interested in fighting spam will be able to ‘follow the money’ on their own, details of the method can be found here. Researchers using the techniques outlined there say that for search terms like ‘drugs’ or ‘ring tone’ over 30% of the search results are spam pages.  The overall findings using 1000 separate keywords showed an average of 11% of search results were purely spam pages.  Microsoft is however confident that this new method, along with what they site as stronger accountability of online traffic, will allow them to eliminate spam from the internet altogether.  It is unlikely though that spammers will sit back and let Microsoft eliminate them.