How do these "bots" work, and what is their purpose?

McLovin · 10-06-2013, 12:02 PM

If you look at this "new" account here on Pelican, and "his" posts, it's obvious this is some kind of scam or bot.

Pelican Parts Technical BBS - Search Results

All 8 posts are fairly random, and use cut and pasted words/phrases from the original poster.

It's very curious to me. What is the purpose of that? How does it work, it is totally automatic or is some person actually manually cutting and pasting those responses?

Joe Bob · Joe Bob's Garage

The account looks to have been deleted.

porsche4life · porsche4life's Garage

Not sure what their purpose is, but they show up all the time, report them and the mods delete any trace of them

legion · 10-06-2013, 12:16 PM

They could be used to gather data on the rest of us.

They could be used to build a post count so that they can suddenly start posting authoritative-sounding advice that is actually a stealth product pitch.

They could be used to probe the BBS for security flaws aimed at stealing personal information.

speeder · 10-06-2013, 12:17 PM

It's kind of cool when you can get a robot to back you up in an argument, though.

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

There is an inbeded linked picture in each post. They are "invisible", probably a 1 byte jpg. But I expect it leads to a site that is up to no good.

Bill Douglas · 10-06-2013, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by speeder

It's kind of cool when you can get a robot to back you up in an argument, though.

Sure... But no robot nudity though.

Steve Carlton · 10-06-2013, 02:44 PM

It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but not as good.

stomachmonkey · 10-06-2013, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by red-beard

There is an inbeded linked picture in each post. They are "invisible", probably a 1 byte jpg. But I expect it leads to a site that is up to no good.

Or it's an ad tracking pixel.

Each time the post is loaded it fires.

You could scam a media buy that way.

Advertiser pays a media agency to buy/run an online campaign whose target demographic is car guys.

Rather than buy all the impressions that they are guaranteeing they can place tracking pixels in posts on car related forums and each click registers as an impression.

Media agency gets paid because they delivered the impressions the customer paid for but media agency double dipped because they never bought all the ad space paid for by the customer.