1. September/2007ECE/UBC - Predictable Computing Systems Prof. Sathish Golapakrishnan 1 Google, we’ve got a problem Elizeu Santos-Neto

2. September/2007ECE/UBC - Predictable Computing Systems Prof. Sathish Golapakrishnan 2 Spam Multiple variants  E-mail, web spam, link spam, tag spam, RSS feed spam, blog spam, etc Blogs are an easy target and tool How ?  A spam blog (example)  Comment spam (example)

3. September/2007ECE/UBC - Predictable Computing Systems Prof. Sathish Golapakrishnan 3 What are the effects? Search ranking manipulation  Link farms  Keyword spoofing User frustration: survey (Schroeder et al.)  25% have seen colleagues kicking their computers  2% confess to have hit the person next to them

4. September/2007ECE/UBC - Predictable Computing Systems Prof. Sathish Golapakrishnan 4 How to tame spam? Content analysis nofollow attribute Spam-proof ranking strategies “Report Spam” buttons Hybrid solutions

5. September/2007ECE/UBC - Predictable Computing Systems Prof. Sathish Golapakrishnan 5 Google, we’ve got a problem! http://googlecustomsearch.blogspot.com/ “Unusual” posts appeared Design was completely changed Several spam links and comments

6. September/2007ECE/UBC - Predictable Computing Systems Prof. Sathish Golapakrishnan 6 What did it happen? Hypothesis: operators ignored the messages about spam detection. How does the Blogger spam detection works? (intuition)

7. September/2007ECE/UBC - Predictable Computing Systems Prof. Sathish Golapakrishnan 7 Spam Detector Blogs Blog Owner Where is my blog?

8. September/2007ECE/UBC - Predictable Computing Systems Prof. Sathish Golapakrishnan 8 Conclusions and Final Comments Even Google is not immune to operator failures Also, the mechanism seems to make a wrong assumptions about the speed of operators feedback Spam handling turnaround time should be proportional to the volume of visitors? Prefixed trust set of blogs?

9. September/2007ECE/UBC - Predictable Computing Systems Prof. Sathish Golapakrishnan 9 References Schroeder et al.  Collecting, Analysing, and Exploiting Failure Data from Real, Large Systems. Google Tech Talks, October, 2006. Spam Blog:  http://raulypennington2006.blogspot.com/2007/09/hard-money- mortgage-california-ca.html http://raulypennington2006.blogspot.com/2007/09/hard-money- mortgage-california-ca.html Spam Comment:  simply a link to a spam web page in the comments NetworkWorld.com:  http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/080807-google-mistakes-own- blog-for.html http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/080807-google-mistakes-own- blog-for.html Risks Digest  http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/24.80.html#subj4 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/24.80.html#subj4