What's up with the Fox News comment spam?

I've been getting it for a while -- four of the five comments at this post, for example, are Fox News spam, that is, seemingly random comments that include links to stories at the Fox News website and urge readers to click on them.

The same IP address (206.15.101.61) is used for two of them -- it shows up for a comment at another post, too -- and another IP address (206.15.101.197) used for the other two comments and for three more Foxspams on other posts. I got one more at that old Cheney post today, but I killed it before deciding to write about it...

Both of the addresses above are listed as News Corp addresses, or at least with News Corp as the ISP...News Corp of course being the parent company of Fox News.

This goes back several months, here's one from February...the names "Luther Jensen" and "LJ" used to be pretty common on the comments, although many other monikers are in use.

Is Fox behind it? If not, why would anyone else do it?

I've emailed Fox News corporate communications to ask them about it...

Comments

[Fec Stench]

You have been targeted by Right Wing Cyber Jihadists. Be thankful it's not a DoS attack.

[Sue]

Does typepad allow you to block an IP address? Do that and expect that Fox will deny having anything to do with it. You might want to know that 206.15.101.61 is registered to (and give Jason a call):

OrgName: News Corporation
OrgID: NEWSC
Address: 1211 Avenue of the Americas
Address: 7th Floor
City: New York
StateProv: NY
PostalCode: 10036
OrgTechName: Ripkey, Jason J
OrgTechPhone: +1-212-852-7000
jripkey@newscorp.com

[Britt Whitmire]

What did you do/say to Mr. O'Reilly, Ed?

[Connie Mack Jr]

What did you do/say to Mr. O'Reilly, Ed?* Britt

You really don't want to know Britt. That is personal between phone sex Bill and innocent Ed!

[Ed Cone]

The News Corp switchboard says they have noone listed by the name "Jason Ripkey."

It does sound a like a nom de web, doesn't it?

[Sue]

By law, everyone's got an "abuse@" and/or "postmaster@" email account for a registered web server. Send email to "abuse@" and you'll get moved up the food chain.

I bet Jason worked there once. If they wanted to hide it, there are easier ways.

[darkmoon]

Read your eWeek article. Actually, the Fox News comm honcho might not know all the facts about what his division is doing. Many large corporations hire people to monitor forums and blogs now to gain credit, and then promote their items/cause when necessary. Usually they take on multiple monikers.

Similarly, if you've looked at your IPs, it comes from not only the same Corporate but it also originates in the same C class address. They can track that down VERY easily.

I would say that Brian Lewis probably doesn't know, or he's not being up front with you. Either way, it's a paid job for sure. Just do a search for Luther Jensen, with a hotmail address. He shows up a number of times in different places but always with the same News Corp IPs.

[Jeremy Pierce]

I wouldn't think this has anything to do with right-wing anything. Fox News is a business, and businesses often promote their websites with spam. It's not even that they expect people to click on the links. The point is to increase their Google ranking for these stories by placing links to them on blogs, which tend to have high Google rankings, and links from higher-rankes sites tend to increase the Google ranking even more. They don't realize that most blogs now have code that causes Google to ignore links in comments, so it's sort of a pointless gesture, but people sometimes do stupid things.

[CGHill]

To be honest, I think the most likely explanation for this is that several machines in the Fox News domain have been hijacked - probably due to people surfing at work and being careless - and are being used as zombies to forward this spam from some offshore point.

[Ed Cone]

Perhaps...but remember that the spam is promoting Fox News. So offshore spammers are hijacking Fox servers and promoting...Fox?

[Phelps]

I am betting that it is an anti-Fox nut/group that is trying to get Fox URLs put on blog blacklists and delisted from google as a spammer.

(IP addresses are trivial to spoof, so don't rely on that.)

[Choo-Choo]

for several years i watch only Fox News. I do check out other sources but always go back to Fox. In the last two years Hiraldo Rivevera has been prominent on your channel and has become to be very offensive to a conservative mind, at least mine. The last straw was his reaction to Rush's comments. He is a totally irrational cool aid drinker and I will no longer give him one second of my time.
In the past I would tolerate his insanity only to hear the other Fox commentators. No longer. When ever his name or face comes up on Fox I will immediately change channels to something else.

Sorry guys but he is someone I don't want to hear anything from. My opinion is he is best suited for a tabloid page and nothing real.

Please take him off!!

Sorry!!

Allen Train--Honolulu, Hawaii

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