Spammers....
 

Just see a fresh batch of spam from the same "new" id...I've reported one of them. I'll go back to my suggestion from a couple of years ago:

You must have a minimum of 20 posts (or 10, or 5, or 1...I'm flexible) before you are allowed to post here :D

Or maybe just block anything/anyone that attaches this type of crap:

interinsurances.com/huht.xxjpg

Freakin' auto insurance spam :(. Do all of these new IDs originate from the same IP address(es)? It's gettin' old...

A new one seems to pop up every day and makes 8 posts. I can't see the point of it.

I'd still like to kill the little mother****er, though...

JR

That "smiley" emoticon that I referenced above is a link back to their web site (as pointed out to me by StomachMonkey recently) and generates traffic for them. I'd filter the IP address (if viable)...

You have to work at it a little bit to get back to their web site. That's why I didn't understand the point. Most people would just ignore the posts and go on. What pissed me off and got me to look deeper into it was the fact that they joined under a new name every day and posted exactly 8 times.

Still want to reach out and kill them...

JR

I saw in the newspaper today that Nigeria is now the largest economy on the African continent. It has surpassed South Africa. Really.

Nigeria has to be the number one scammer and spammer source on the planet. I have no facts to back that up, but I saw it on the internet once so it must be true.

It's SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

When search engines scour a site one of the things they track is outbound links.

Outbound links indicate there may be something interesting / relevant on the other end.

Cars + insurance is highly relevant and would count favorably in the ranking algorithm.

The more a site is linked to from other sites the higher the relevance / ranking in search engines.

It's not meant for us to act on and done in a way that we might even ignore / not notice. In fact they don't want us to notice it. Note how they try to post something that is somewhat relevant to the thread.

It's food for the search engines.

It's a bit more complicated than that but that's the basic gist of it.

Thanks for the explanation. I still want to kill them. Kill, kill, kill...

It pisses me off when people manipulate things for their own gain, without caring about the effect they may have on others.

JR

If we could only kill stupid people......

The ONLY reason there is spam, is the stupid people that fall for it. If spam did not make mega millions of bucks, it would go away.