Enigma Software and the case of the missing weblog

"Weblog on Spyware removal, has good info on Spyware Phishing, and includes free downloads for Spyware Prevention software" - these were the words that enticed me on the Spyware page of Wikipedia. However, the end result wasn't quite what I expected.

Weblog? No.

Enigma software? Yes.

In amongst the good links such as Bleeping Computer, Spywareinfo and Doxdesk lurks a new form of parasite - one that no removal tool will fix...piggyback advertising.

These days, performing a search for sites such as this will pull up pages such as this, who mix in clear Clickbank affiliates and some possibly rogue sites with links to Vitalsecurity.org, Webhelper4u and other "genuine" sites.

Mixed in with the dross.

In addition, there's a bunch of links to sites full of Stopguard - stopguard install codes, stopguard ads, probably stopguard t-shirts if you look hard enough. If anyone is brave enough to actually click one of the genuine links after that lot, I'll send them the t-shirt free of charge.

This is a growing practice - fudging search results and hiding the crud. Does it give sites like this a bad name by association? Possibly. What's worse (getting back to Enigma), companies whose practices in the past have been less than, er, honest?...have now latched onto the biggest sales phenomenon out there at present -

The commercial weblog.

Potentially thousands of weblog update sites, all whoring your site's url on their front pages, and all you have to do is whack that "publish" button. Getting on Google was never that easy. Mass markets in seconds, absolutely free of charge.

What's that, you say? The Wikipedia link is just spam on a grand scale, and its not even a weblog anyway.

Lucky they actually DO have a weblog, then.

Scroll right down to the bottom of the page and look! A weblog link. Check it out - full of entirely generic articles that could have been lifted from any news site, with a few comments that look very fake.

But it IS a weblog, they'll argue! We're entitled to have it on Wikipedia if someone put it on there! After all, its been around since November 2001!

Funny that - a glance at the Internet Archive reveals that on July 26th, 2003 there was no weblog there. Same story for February 2nd, 2004.

Backdated weblogs, and that's not the end of the story.

Spyware Warrior, one of the best spyware removal sites out there (coupled with its excellent weblog) is one of the current guiding lights on spyware. Its had its fair share of run-ins with the Enigma group, too.

Spyware Warrior was even on the Wiki list, for a time. The potential for traffic from there is massive. However...look what happened in December.

1:30, 16th December 2004 - Look! Spyware Warrior is there! Down at the bottom. The Enigma "weblog" isn't.

However...

22:11, 16th December 2004 - Look - Spyware Warrior has gone, and the Enigma "weblog" has suddenly been added!

A number of seemingly innocent edits bunched together, posted from an anonymous IP address to make it look like he's not about to perform skullduggery on a grand scale - then -

BAM!

Lights out for SWW, and a new (unwelcome) addition to the ranks is there.

Is it going to far to say someone connected with Enigma did this? Impossible to say - though it can't just be coincidence that the Spyware Warrior entry mentions the email they recieved from Enigma - a rather big story at the time.

As a test, I put my site on there and, sure enough, it was deleted within a few hours. Yet an obvious entry that (in all fairness) probably shouldn't be there has stolen the place of Spyware Warrior, and continues to fester away unchecked. I wonder just how much money has rolled into Enigma's bank account as a result of that one link? Probably quite a lot, I imagine.

Something is rotting away at the heart of free information, and I don't think there's an axe big enough to hack out the cancer.