Spambots

[1990C4S]

We have a bunch of spam here now, random five letter names, always appearing as post #4, and they copy a quote from a real user who posted earlier in the thread.

The 'new' reply has some crap embedded that doesn't show up...but what's the point?

How does this generate traffic or do anything useful for them?

[GH85Carrera]

I wonder about it as well. I just report the post as a spambot and ignore it. It goes away when a moderator sees the report.

I wonder about spam in general. How does any group or person make money sending me a ton of crap offering to sell a pill to make my stomach flat, cure my diabetes, and a warranty for my car.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

How does any group or person make money sending me a ton of crap offering to sell a pill to make my stomach flat, cure my diabetes, and a warranty for my car.

They have pills for that? Next thing you'll be telling me they have pills that will give you a boner.

[GH85Carrera]

And pills that make pretty women want to take care of your boner.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by 1990C4S

We have a bunch of spam here now, random five letter names, always appearing as post #4, and they copy a quote from a real user who posted earlier in the thread.

The 'new' reply has some crap embedded that doesn't show up...but what's the point?

How does this generate traffic or do anything useful for them?

There is an invisible tracking pixel, sometimes a visible smiley, that aids in search engine ranking or pay per clicks. Note that "click" is a misnomer, when the pixel loads on a page it fires registering an impression.

One of the parameters for search engine ranking is how many sites link back to yours.

The more of these things they place on relevant sites the higher their page ranking.

For ads people buy a guaranteed number of impressions for $x.xx. People who don't know what they are doing or who are being cheap don't buy "qualified" impressions, impressions that are actually from a relevant demographic. This tactic allows the ad channel to generate a legitimate report saying "look, we gave you your impressions".

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

How does any group or person make money sending me a ton of crap offering to sell a pill to make my stomach flat, cure my diabetes, and a warranty for my car.

I wonder the same thing. I sent them $99.00, they sent me the pills that flattened out my gut, but surely a pill that good has to cost more than $99.00, no?

[Mark Henry]

Install Ad Block Plus (ABP), it deals with most popup ads, etc.

I'm not saying they are great, in fact ABP does have a bit a sleaze play as a company can pay to get off their block list, a bit like extortion.
But for the user it's great and free.

[Jon B]

I wonder the same thing. I sent them $99.00, they sent me pills that flattened out my gut, but surely a pill that good has to cost more than $99.00, no?

[widebody911]

Originally Posted by Mark Henry

Install Ad Block Plus (ABP), it deals with most popup ads, etc.

I'm not saying they are great, in fact ABP does have a bit a sleaze play as a company can pay to get off their block list, a bit like extortion.
But for the user it's great and free.

uBlock Origin doesn't have the sleaze and uses the same blocklists

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

[MBAtarga]

Pop-up ads are not the issue. It's the idiotic spambot posts within the threads here on our highly regarded forum that irk me.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by widebody911

uBlock Origin doesn't have the sleaze and uses the same blocklists

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Cool, thanks. Switched.