Why are the spammers/bots allowed here?

[KFC911]

^^^^ I have reported nearly 70K of your posts Glen.... the mods are very busy and will get to you eventually

[masraum]

Two more, richardgravner and roselewis. I think someone already reported roselewis. I suspect richard and rose are the same person with multiple accounts.

[KFC911]

Send Matt a PM with a list Steve....

[70SATMan]

Why have a post report button if the bloody thing doesn’t work? PMs seem highly inefficient to me especially if a mod is also using PMs for regular forum chatting.

[KFC911]

Bump .... point them out guys, and I will add them to the listed ones in the OP....

[masraum]

I am set to display 40 posts per page. I see this thread with 26 posts, no problem.

[McLovin]

Hmm, interesting.
So it’s not a bot.
But also not “legit.”
I just wonder how the human spamming business model works.

[KFC911]

Jessy (and probably all of the current ones) are real people imo, but I haven't read posts by some. The obvious bots just quote a tidbit in an old thread from a prior post.... easy to program that too.

I'm sure they make a fortune with their business model too

[stevej37]

Nothing wrong with Spam.
Goes great with Founders French Toast.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by stevej37

Nothing wrong with Spam.
Goes great with Founders French Toast.

I ate spam when I was in the boyscouts (probably about 40 years ago). It was easy to take camping and cook. As I remember it tasted OK (maybe a bit salty). I often think after these threads, "I should get a can, just to see how my memory is and what I think now." But I can never bring myself to actually do it.

I've also been known to buy Kraft mac-n-chees, a can of ravioli, Chunky soup, etc... for nostalgia's sake.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by KC911

Jessy (and probably all of the current ones) are real people imo, but I haven't read posts by some. The obvious bots just quote a tidbit in an old thread from a prior post.... easy to program that too.

I'm sure they make a fortune with their business model too

Right, when their name is "ixaoeiuklu" and they quote someone else's post, I'm pretty sure that's a bot. But the current batch are real peeps.

[Jim2]

Though spammers and scammers are easy to identify it's sometimes difficult to get them banned, feels like the mods don't agree. Here a mod even joined in and posted, but neglected to '86 the scammer.

Eventually another infrequent poster with WTB ad will get taken.

Sample from the engine building forum:

Engine

[McLovin]

I tried to find some answers, but didn’t quickly see much info on bulletin board spammer income. Plenty of info on email spammers, but that’s a different kind of operation.

Payment is probably similar, I.e., they get a commission on sales (assuming there’s something in the links they are posting that allows them to be identified as the referral source). Anyways, on an unrelated subject you may want to check out https://twelve-inches-guaranted.com.

“Spammers

Spammers send out millions of messages on behalf of online merchants who want to sell a product. If a spam recipient buys something, the spammer gets a percentage of the sale. For pharmaceuticals the commission can be as high as 50%, and research has shown that the response rate can be rather high. A good example is "penis related spam" which has a 5% click rate, meaning that 5% of the recipients actually open the spam mail and click on the link in the mail.

This means that spammers can make a massive amount of money. In July 2007, a retired spammer told PC World that at the peak of his power he pulled in $10,000 to $15,000 a week sending e-mails that promoted pills, porn and casinos”

[KFC911]

^^^^ Meh .... for that meager amount I wouldn't quit my night job being a $tud at the local wimmin's college .... but that's just me.

[A930Rocket]

Originally Posted by McLovin

…Anyways, on an unrelated subject you may want to check out https://twelve-inches-guaranted.com….

It’s not only spam, it’s a scam. After trying it, I only got 11.5 inches. What a rip off!

[McLovin]

Statistically at least 10% of you clicked on the link

[cstreit]

Are these posts reported? I don’t recall seeing them flagged.

Wondering if there’s a glitch in the matrix…

[Pazuzu]

Again, this is a different type of spam. They're not looking for clicks. In fact, they probably don't want you to click the links.

They just want webcrawlers to SEE the links. That's why they go back and secretly add them weeks later, long after anyone is going to see the post. If they wanted clicks, they would try to put the links right up front in the begining.


It's all part of SEO, Search Engine Optimization. The webcrawlers see the links in many locations, and that triggers positive action towards that website in the search engines.


Also, just because "Jesse" replied, or added something more complex than a link doesn't mean that "Jesse" still isn't basically a search and replace algorithm. Someone might sit and type out dozens of replies to dozens of websites, but it's still an automated bot that goes and does the text replacement. They use these forums because the same forum software is used over and over again, so the bot programing can be repeated over and over again. The background code is the same across dozens or hundreds of websites, which makes multiple attacks easy.




*Not an internet safely expert, but yadda yadda Holiday Inn yadda yadda.

[McLovin]

Thanks Mike, very interesting.
It looks like “Jesse” has been nuked, his reply in this thread is gone, but it was a very detailed and specific response to the specific comments in this thread. It wouldn’t be applicable to any threads on other BBs.
That had to be typed by a human, right?

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by McLovin

Thanks Mike, very interesting.
It looks like “Jesse” has been nuked, his reply in this thread is gone, but it was a very detailed and specific response to the specific comments in this thread. It wouldn’t be applicable to any threads on other BBs.
That had to be typed by a human, right?

Come on, you know that computers are now smart enough to read this thread, process the data, understand the subject and then use their fake username to interject human sounding responses, right?



I'm kidding. I hope. Jesse is clearly a person, but that person is clearly acting like an old skool bot. Perhaps some companies pay a LOT of money for people to actually sit and created reasonable looking posts? The posts you see a given bot-person reply to are varied and random, as are the links. Perhaps there's a dark web list of interested companies that you can buy, and you just search dozens of forums for threads vaguely related to one of the companies on the list?

The old bots are stopped at the gate these days, forums have enough protection software for that. But, the modern internet stealth weapon is a bored poor Gen-Z in Ukraine, who can evade the built in protections.