Eilistraee.com

Well things have been interesting for moderation the last few days. The bots are back from all indications as 150 have joined the last few days. Some of course might not have posted yet, however most that submitted a post got banned and post not approved. A few just got not approved for being off topic.

Myabe this will make me sound stupid, but I wonder why people bother making those ads spamming bots. Their advertismentes don't look like anyone would check them [i:2tbcu234]at all[/i:2tbcu234]...

Well because it costs little and money can be made from using them.
A bot is not hard to find for free, however making one can be a puzzle to solve (a game).
It costs little to have a bot run in the background of your own computer, it costs nothing if you can hijack some others user's computer (virus) to run the bot for you.
The rewards can be great even with legal ads. Google started by charging a faction of a cent for ad displayed with its search engine. Of course illegal gathered information certainly can pay better, the ID theft programs, etc.

I'm not convinced that they're actually 'bots' as such, but actually people who post spam. I know that there are people (particularly in countries where such labor is cheap) who get hired to spam as many places as possible. Hence why check to ensure that the poster is human often don't work (as it is actually a person posting, they're just posting spam).

[quote="Irennan":2w530kfs]Myabe this will make me sound stupid, but I wonder why people bother making those ads spamming bots. Their advertismentes don't look like anyone would check them [i:2w530kfs]at all[/i:2w530kfs]...[/quote:2w530kfs]
It's not so much about people checking the links, it's about increasing website search rankings. They more places link to a website, the higher that website's search ranking (in Google) is and the higher the search ranking the more often the site will pop up for people's legitimate searches.

At least that's my understanding.


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le

I see. Thanks for the explanations.

[quote="Shir'le E. Illios":z5rwbwy5]I'm not convinced that they're actually 'bots' as such, but actually people who post spam. I know that there are people (particularly in countries where such labor is cheap) who get hired to spam as many places as possible. Hence why check to ensure that the poster is human often don't work (as it is actually a person posting, they're just posting spam).

[quote="Irennan":z5rwbwy5]Myabe this will make me sound stupid, but I wonder why people bother making those ads spamming bots. Their advertismentes don't look like anyone would check them [i:z5rwbwy5]at all[/i:z5rwbwy5]...[/quote:z5rwbwy5]
It's not so much about people checking the links, it's about increasing website search rankings. They more places link to a website, the higher that website's search ranking (in Google) is and the higher the search ranking the more often the site will pop up for people's legitimate searches.

At least that's my understanding.


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le[/quote:z5rwbwy5]
It's not just Google. Most major corporations that host a search engine do this, as well. It's mostly for business that cannot afford to outright buy ad space on a search result. But in Google's case, they send out people to sell "ad words." My girlfriend's former company was constantly pressured to purchase these.

[quote="Shir'le E. Illios":3azc04ho]It's not so much about people checking the links, it's about increasing website search rankings. They more places link to a website, the higher that website's search ranking (in Google) is and the higher the search ranking the more often the site will pop up for people's legitimate searches.

At least that's my understanding.[/quote:3azc04ho]

That is my understanding too.

Regular spammers are bad enough, but I see two types of spammers who are a bit tougher to deal with.

Signature spammers post "I agree" posts in threads (sometimes they seem to automatically generate a sentence that contains some words from the actual thread) and profile spammers do not post any obvious spam, but use the website link in their forum profile to point to a website.

I do spam patrol elsewhere and one of the problems I see is that moderators can deal with regular spam, but administrators need to remove spam signatures or spam links in profiles. If spambots make a mass attack on a forum, they can often set up fake accounts faster than a human admin can block them.

Sadly, I have seen a few previously awesome communities killed after being totally overrun by spambots.