Forum Spammers, Think About This.

19 replies
A spammer showed up tonight. I've stripped out identifying information in these images, but the important stuff is there.

Here's the count from the "show recent posts" report.


Here's the oldest of those posts.

Notice that he started posting at 6:42.

Here's the latest.

Now, just to be perfectly clear, let me explain something here.

This user posted the same two posts, over and over, for an hour and six minutes. At the time I noticed him, he had 57 posts on the board.

These posts are taking up space in the database. They are taking up bandwidth every time someone views the thread. And they are wasting time whenever someone starts to read them, thinking it is somehow relevant.

"But that's not what I do!" shout all the other forum spammers. "I make relevant and desirable comments!"

That's what this jackhole thinks, too. That's the problem with spammers. They honestly believe that you would race right over to their site to buy Viagra and hydrocodone and temple kiff, if only someone would tell you where it was.

If you do this sort of thing, you have honestly lost touch with reality. Your efforts to explain or excuse it are not falling on deaf ears because we don't get it, but because you are stark raving mad.

If you spam forums, get help. I'm not kidding. Get up, go get the phone, and call some kind of psychiatric hotline. You're freakin' nuts. Go get some therapy so you can join the rest of us in objective reality.
#forum #spammers
  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    Related to this, to all those good WF members who noticed the spam:
    Infraction does nothing. Don't give infraction for blatant spam! (it means nothing; it's just a message to the spammer)

    Report the post as spam - click the triangle with the ! in it. That will go to the mods
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  • Profile picture of the author moneyblogger1
    Hahahah.....what does he think is going to happen? Loads of sales will just magically appear after he spams?....lol

    What a waste of time
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  • Profile picture of the author l3vi501
    LOL Always funny till they flood yah!

    Have you all thought about turning on VBulls or adding the plug-in to take users that keep posting the same items and moving them to one thread as well as block post flooding.

    You can also do a quick plug that does a search and find. For example I had a real problem a while ago with new users trying to get around the built in anti spam system on vBull, so I wrote a plug-in to search for patterns that spammers use (ie "visit" ".com|.net|etc". After that I never seen anyone spam us again.
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  • Profile picture of the author christopherNV
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
      Originally Posted by christopherNV View Post

      This forum needs a "donate a beer to the mods" paypal button because the endless flood of these spam posts has got to be taking it's toll.
      I believe but cannot prove that some of every WSO and WFH thread fee goes to the mods.

      I'm also rather of the opinion that the question of whether that is true should never be answered, because either way, a shedload of people are going to be angry about it and think they have a better idea.
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      "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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    • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
      Originally Posted by christopherNV View Post

      You do realize that all of that junk is being posted by an automated bot and both of us have now wasted our own time on something and a person who probably doesn't even know this forum exists.
      That's another problem, though, isn't it? Whoever launched the bot has the same mentality as the person that does it manually. The problem is the use of bots just makes it far worse.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jagged
    A Suggestion...

    When there is a blantant spam post like this one....please do not reference it or copy it into your post....
    Once the Mods bounce the morons...errrr, i mean guilty party, your post lingers on with their spam still seen...
    Just ignore & report it...let the mods do their jobs....

    That concludes this public service announcement...

    edit:
    If you have made such a reference or copy post...you can always go back to it & edit your post...if it's not edited there is a good chance your post will be deleted to.....
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      I posted it in the OT - got a good laugh when THAT spammer posted in a thread started by another spammer.

      Now they are talking to each other....
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      Dear April: I don't want any trouble from you.
      January was long, February was iffy, March was a freaking dumpster fire.
      So sit down, be quiet, and don't touch anything.
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      • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Kelsall
        What this person was doing was just stupid - basically, hoping that if he posts over and over and over that eventually someone will click a link or whatever, but it doesn't even look like he/she set their bot (probably xrumer) up right....lol?

        he/she knew before even hitting the button that any success that they had would be by finding some dead abandoned forum where their post would stay live for weeks/months/years until the webmaster either deleted the forum or just let the domain go.

        I don't think that there are very many, if any active participants here that would resort to a strategy such as the one this person did.
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        • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
          Originally Posted by Jeremy Kelsall View Post

          eventually someone will click a link or whatever
          The links weren't even clickable. :rolleyes:
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          "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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        • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
          Originally Posted by Jeremy Kelsall View Post

          What this person was doing was just stupid - basically, hoping that if he posts over and over and over that eventually someone will click a link or whatever, but it doesn't even look like he/she set their bot (probably xrumer) up right....lol?
          He probably had to reach the minimum number of posts before he could post active URLs. The newer spam posts do have active URLs.
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          Dan's content is irregularly read by handfuls of people. Join the elite few by reading his blog: dcrBlogs.com, following him on Twitter: dcrTweets.com or reading his fiction: dcrWrites.com but NOT by Clicking Here!

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    • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
      Originally Posted by Jagged View Post

      A Suggestion...

      When there is a blantant spam post like this one....please do not reference it or copy it into your post....
      Or at least obscure the URL.
      Signature

      Dan's content is irregularly read by handfuls of people. Join the elite few by reading his blog: dcrBlogs.com, following him on Twitter: dcrTweets.com or reading his fiction: dcrWrites.com but NOT by Clicking Here!

      Dan also writes content for hire, but you can't afford him anyway.
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    • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
      Originally Posted by Jagged View Post

      Once the Mods bounce the morons...errrr, i mean guilty party, your post lingers on with their spam still seen...
      I was about to say "but all URLs are blurred beyond recognition" - but I double checked, and I had missed one. Fixed.

      The images now hold no benefit for anyone, so it doesn't matter if people can see them.
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      "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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      • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
        Originally Posted by Razer Rage View Post

        Erm, I can still see the URL. Did you forget to upload the new pic or something?
        The old one is probably in your cache.
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          • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Kelsall
            Originally Posted by MarkAndrews IMCopywriting View Post

            This guy isn't a spam bot, he's going only where the highest viewing numbers are - currently the WSO section.

            I've lost count of the number of times I've reported his posts now.

            Good on you too, Dan.
            It is indeed a software posting those comments...if you look at the posts closely you can tell.
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          • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
            Originally Posted by MarkAndrews IMCopywriting View Post

            This guy isn't a spam bot, he's going only where the highest viewing numbers are - currently the WSO section.

            I've lost count of the number of times I've reported his posts now.

            Good on you too, Dan.
            He has almost as many infractions as posts, and some of the infractions have already expired.

            I don't know how many I've reported either. Hopefully some more people start reporting so that the automated(?) system will kick in and give him the boot.

            At this point, I don't know if it's worthwhile for the two of us to keep reporting his posts. I'm thinking that the WF system goes by the number of different users reporting the posts rather than the total number of reports. Which would make sense so as to avoid one person getting another kicked out by maliciously reporting every post or something.
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            Dan's content is irregularly read by handfuls of people. Join the elite few by reading his blog: dcrBlogs.com, following him on Twitter: dcrTweets.com or reading his fiction: dcrWrites.com but NOT by Clicking Here!

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  • Profile picture of the author mywebwork
    I just spent time following a similar series of spammy threads that were duplicated on several of the forums and reporting them to mods. I have always been impressed with the efficiency that the mods react, all of the offensive posts disappeared within minutes of my reporting them. In fact some went away while I was reporting them, indication that other Warriors were also performing housecleaning.

    I do agree fully about the warped mentality displayed by forum spammers. Fortunately with the combination of great mods and diligent members has kept the Warrior Forum free of a lot of this garbage. Quite a contrast to some other forums which have essentially become spam clearing houses.

    Bill
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