SquidSpam: Zero Tolerance

Here's a quick overview of what we consider SquidSpam. There's a lot more, but these are the usual cases. If you're still not sure if you've encountered spam, please take a second to read more about our Zero Tolerance policy on our Terms of Service.

Spam (the noun):

1. Lenses that autoredirect surfers to another site. (No iframes, no other hacks, nada).
2. Lenses and accounts that just pump out uncurated, copied and pasted content.
3. Lenses that are egregiously irrelevant to the Squidoo category they're posted in.
4. Anything else that smells spammy to Squidoo official and the Squidoo community.

Spam (the verb): This kind of spam is the worst. It means bad behavior from people who are out to ruin the good things online for us all.

5. Spamming bloggers with trackbacks, comments, or links to your Squidoo lens.
6. Email spamming people you don't have permission to talk to, pointing them to your lens.
7. Spamming our lensmasters, via the Contact form, or in Guestbooks.
8. Hacking the Squidoo site in any way that outputs spam to people anywhere online.

1. It has Adult, X-rated content. If it does your lens will get locked and deleted.

2. Spam, the noun. Spam the noun is content on your lens that looks like spam. Examples: reappropriated and uncredited content from other sites or lenses; cut and pasted, uncurated content; tag stuffing--jamming a bunch of tags into a module or title, hoping to trick search engines; and more.

3. Lenses on one of our SquidDon't topics. Be sure to read up on topics that Squidoo just doesn't allow lenses on, like gambling lenses, pharmaceutical sales, credit card debt, ringtones, some affiliate networking sites and products and more. Read more here.

4. Spamming, the verb. This is an aggressive act of forcing your lens on someone without permission. Perhaps you've been reported for spamming a Squidoo Group, Guestbook, lensmaster, or someone off the site, like a blogger. If your lens is only locked, you're lucky. We usually delete those accounts entirely. Read up on Squidoo's Zero Tolerance policy.

5. Yikes! Someone has reported your lens for having illegal content, for plagiarizing, or for violating a copyright. Squidoo is a fair harbor platform that doesn't check or endorse the content that is put on lenses. As the lensmaster, you're responsible for the content. Likewise, with nearly 1,000,000 pages on Squidoo, we can't mediate every battle. So we'll probably just lock your lens if we get serious copyright or legal complaints about it. The good news is you can avoid that hassle easily: Don't copy. Don't steal. Don't quote content without crediting it to the original source.

6. You're running a hate lens. There's no room here for hate, sorry. Sure, you can write reviews of products and services you don't like. Sure, you can have whatever opinions you want. This is not a censored happy wonderland. But hate lenses? You know those when you see them. These are lenses specifically ripping on another person by name. Lenses that are just there to make someone else feel bad. Sorry, we'll lock 'em or delete 'em if we find them.

7. Any TOS violation, really. Getting featured on Squidoo, in search results, and to our community is a privilege. If you abuse anything in our Terms of Service, you'll probably have your account deleted instead.

8. Copying someone else's lens. Guess what: In this one rare case, we know who got there first. We can see when content was written. So if you think you're just gonna copy someone else's successful lens: think again.

Yikes! We hate it too.

Luckily, you're in the right place.

Send in your SquidSpam report. Please be sure to include the URL of the lens in question, and tell us why you think this lens (or lensmaster) has been engaging in spam behavior. The more specific you can be, the faster we can act. Thanks!