Do you get frustrated like I do when someone leaves a link to their web site on your Squidoo lens, either as a Comment or as a link in a Plexo module?

 I really do find it very annoying when people do this, and I find that the lensmaster committing the “crime” either has no lenses and profile, or several lenses that are obviously spam and no profile.

 I get very frustrated too when I find that high ranking lensmasters, who really ought to know better, leave nice complimentary messages on their Bio Page, because the person has left a comment on one of their lenses, but I’m not going to rant on further about this here – plenty of material for another day.

 Any person who creates a lensmaster account purely to:

• Be able to leave spam comments/link
• Create spam lenses

Just deserves to be reported to Squidoo HQ, not to be praised for leaving what was most likely a spam comment on one of your lenses,

 Reporting a lensmaster who is breaking the rules is one thing, but if they created their Squidoo account solely to promote their own web sites, which are scams, filled with affiliate links, or plagiarized material, then there is a certain comfort in taking action against them.

 The first thing that I do, if I visit their web site(s) that they left in a link and find it/them to be spam/scams, is to flag that site(s) on WOT (Web Of Trust) and leave a comment to say that the site has been “link spamming”.  This will reduce their traffic by highlighting to anyone who has the WOT plugin installed in their browser that this site has a dubious reputation.

 I created a lens that describes how to do this, called Fight Back At Spam, and you might find that if you do not already have WOT installed in your browser, it will save you some grief.

 Ideally however, you want to get the web site that is spamming (a) removed, and (b) deny them income.

 If you can determine who the hosting company is, and provide proof to them of the spamming and any other activity that the site owner has been doing that is against TOS, then it is likely that the web site will be taken down, and the owner’s account cancelled.

 Another thing that you can do, if the offending web site has Google Ads on it’s pages, is to identify the Adsense Account Number, and report the site to Google as breaking it’s TOS.   Google is keen to ensure that Adsense members provide quality sites where their advertiser’s money is going to be spent, so by reporting the site owner to Google, you can deny them significant earnings, especially if they have a number of web sites using that account.

 When reporting a site to either the hosting company or to Google, be sure to retain copies of all correspondence, as well as screen prints of offending pages and web sites etc.

 I am going to be adding more detailed information about how to do this on Fight Back At Spam very soon, and together we can hopefully discourage a few people from spamming, or at least have the pleasure of handicapping them.