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Why do the spammers bother?

by valerieSONORA
28 replies
Everyday I get "comments" on many of my blogs which are spam. Like viagra, pills online, nude celeb pics, etc.

Of course the spam filter gets them all and they are all trashed.

Do the spammers really think their spam posts will get approved? Of course they won't. I always manually approve every comment. No comments are approved without that.

So why do they bother? Nothing better to do?
#bother #spammers
  • Profile picture of the author Star69
    I have a feeling they are all auto-submissions...
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  • Profile picture of the author Sheryl Polomka
    Some people are just sad aren't they. Its the same with all the spam emails, mine all get deleted straight away - why do they bother?

    There are far too many people out there in the world that have got nothing better to do than be idiots.

    The other night our garage got broken into and my husbands motorbike got stolen. The next morning the police found it completely burnt out. So these idiots stole the bike for no other reason than to burn it - WHY????

    Some people are just idiots!
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  • Profile picture of the author Star69
    I get at least fifty spam emails every day in my inbox (twice that many in my junk, too.) and they are always deleted unopened. I'm not stupid, they could have viruses! And many are obvious scammers, with subjects like "Your urgent attention please" "Reply to Dr. Ombaonganaga immediately." or "Dear Beloved, your ATM payment is processed."

    Puhleeeze!

    But ya know what? There are actually people out there who open and respond to these emails!!!

    And that's why the scammers keep sending them out. Some people are just stupid enough to reply.
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  • Profile picture of the author sevenish
    The blog spam is posted by an automated tool or bot, so it's not like it's being done by hand.

    E-mail spam works, given the proper proxy framework, adequate volume and automation tools. And no, I'm not a spammer; but the reason these spammers spam is because it does make them money.

    Neither type of spammer is doing it by hand though, so the only "bother" is writing a bit of copy as well as development and configuration of the tool that does all the hard work.
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  • Profile picture of the author tommygadget
    The idea here is to use an automated bot to post 100,000 spam posts per day to blogs to get links back to their viagra or porn sites. If they get a 0.5% success rate, they will have tons of links in no time. It's a numbers game.

    TomG.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ken Strong
    Originally Posted by valerieSONORA View Post

    So why do they bother?
    Because... they like to ANNOY you!
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    • Profile picture of the author dearaewi
      Originally Posted by KenStrong View Post

      Because... they like to ANNOY you!
      Sometimes I almost think this is part of the reason!!

      I get tons of spam on my main blog every day and some of it's almost good but not good enough. It does get caught and dumped and it depends on my mood whether I laugh at the idiotic attempts to get annoyed. Usually I try to laugh, why waste energy being annoyed at something like that. I do feel sorry for the people it catches though, it's so transparent and usually even the most basic spam filter will weed it out.

      Deanna
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  • Profile picture of the author valerieSONORA
    Even though it's automated, it's not like anyone would approve their "comments".
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    • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
      Banned
      Originally Posted by valerieSONORA View Post

      Even though it's automated, it's not like anyone would approve their "comments".
      Some people have their blogs set to approve comments automatically.
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  • Profile picture of the author jayden.fellze
    They might think that though for the 10,000 submissions they have done at least a part of this number will still approve their comments.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bev Clement
    It's interesting that if you have blogs in certain topics you never get spam posts. I have a blog and never get spam comments, and another one was set up with the hello world just to cover the index page and it was loaded with spam comments overnight.

    Two totally different niches, and to me it shows that a lot of the automated posts are geared to certain niches.
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    • Profile picture of the author MaskedMarketer
      Originally Posted by valerieSONORA View Post

      So why do they bother? Nothing better to do?
      Originally Posted by Sheryl Polomka View Post

      why do they bother?
      Because some spammers have made millions of dollars, thats why.
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  • Profile picture of the author Colin Evans
    Originally Posted by valerieSONORA View Post

    So why do they bother? Nothing better to do?
    Ever wondered where some people selling backlinks get them from?

    ---

    Originally Posted by 123rlp View Post

    In email spam I some time play along in the subject line.Then in the body I let them have it.Hay st-- Head remove my email add. from your list you scamming, spamming low life.
    And the poor sod who gets your reply hasn't got a clue what's going on because they never sent the email in the first place... Email spammers forge the headers with harvested email addresses.
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  • Profile picture of the author anonymous123567
    It's so frustrating isn't it!

    They are auto submitters, pieces of software that crawl for dofollow blogs and then post meaningless crap, I had to trawl through 1200 comments yesterday, majority were about viagra....
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  • Profile picture of the author Pat Spence
    I finally had to start moderating my blogs because of the annoying spam. It takes a whole lot of time I would rather be spending doing something more productive.
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    • Profile picture of the author valerieSONORA
      Originally Posted by Pat Spence View Post

      I finally had to start moderating my blogs because of the annoying spam. It takes a whole lot of time I would rather be spending doing something more productive.
      If you use wordpress, there are plugins you can use that save a lot of time. They catch all the spam so you don't have to do anything. There are also Captchas where someone has to enter the words to post a comment.
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  • Profile picture of the author jestershaw
    They get one sale from those e-mail submits...one person who actually clicks on the link in the email and buys the product. They spend $10 to mass email about 1,000 people and if they get 2 sales for $10 each then they make 100% profit. That is why they do it.

    We here are all IM gurus in our own right. We know what the junk mail is. We know better than to click on them and buy. Think of all the people who do not go online to make money. Think of all the people who have never been on the internet and now are getting emails saying they can make $5,000 a day by just "Clicking Here". They see a product that cost $7 promising to make them rich. That is why people keep sending out bulk spam email, because they still work!

    I digress, it sucks but people make money doing it so it won't end till it doesn't work anymore.
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  • Profile picture of the author valerieSONORA
    I never knew you could make millions spamming viagra and links like that. Guess you learn something new everyday. Maybe I'm in the wrong business :p

    Nobody should set their blog to automatically approve comments. Then you'll tons of spam comments and the blog will look trashy.
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    • Profile picture of the author MaskedMarketer
      Originally Posted by valerieSONORA View Post

      I never knew you could make millions spamming viagra and links like that.
      "...over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and placed orders for the company's Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle."

      Heres just one example: Swollen Orders Show Spam's Allure
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      • Profile picture of the author valerieSONORA
        Originally Posted by MaskedMarketer View Post

        "...over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and placed orders for the company's Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle."

        Heres just one example: Swollen Orders Show Spam's Allure
        Holy moly. That's something. I don't even know what to say to that. And I thought nobody even opened spam emails. They made a killing. Somehow I think if I offered $50 pill bottles nobody would buy.
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Lockwood
      Originally Posted by valerieSONORA View Post

      Nobody should set their blog to automatically approve comments. Then you'll tons of spam comments and the blog will look trashy.
      Nobody should tell others how to run their blogs! (Especially when the advice is wrong. )

      I don't get spam comments since I'm using a good plugin that gets rid of them.

      If people have to wait for their comment to get manually approved, many of them won't bother.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by 123rlp View Post

        In email spam I some time play along in the subject line.Then in the body I let them have it.Hay st-- Head remove my email add. from your list you scamming, spamming low life.
        That's actually the second most-desirable action you could take from the spammer's point of view (after placing an order).

        You've just confirmed that the address is live, which makes it 3-4 times more valuable when the spammer resells the database.

        Some of the really big money in spamming is the trade in address lists among the spammers themselves.

        Originally Posted by Renegade Success View Post

        Just as ridiculous as those spammers are the Nigerian ones, and many of us say "Who would fall for something like that?" and yet we see them in the media time and time again about losing everything over that one email.

        There's one born every minute, sad to say
        My bank has signs posted by the teller stations warning people about sending money orders or cashier's checks to Nigeria. There's also a warning about scammers that require funds sent by courier or non-USPS delivery services. (The cheats do this to avoid mail fraud charges.)

        I had an acquaintance who used to say that there was a sucker born every minute, and all he needed to retire was an hour's worth. If he's a good boy, he should be out in about ten years...
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  • Profile picture of the author Devon Brown
    Just as ridiculous as those spammers are the Nigerian ones, and many of us say "Who would fall for something like that?" and yet we see them in the media time and time again about losing everything over that one email.

    There's one born every minute, sad to say
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Lockwood
    Originally Posted by valerieSONORA View Post

    Everyday I get "comments" on many of my blogs which are spam. Like viagra, pills online, nude celeb pics, etc.

    Of course the spam filter gets them all and they are all trashed.

    Do the spammers really think their spam posts will get approved? Of course they won't. I always manually approve every comment. No comments are approved without that.
    It's being done by software, so once it's set up, the people aren't spending their own time.

    Many blogs are not using spam filters and are not manually approving comments. I don't manually approve comments because it's a hassle and discourages real commentors- I use a good plugin (SpamKarma) to keep the spam out and then comments appear right away.

    Also, just because people are doing something doesn't mean it is productive.
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  • Profile picture of the author Micheal Perkins
    The reason they do it is because it works, and they make a lot of money doing it. I'm not condoning it and I would never do it myself, but look at some numbers.

    Let's say the spam 10,000,000 email addresses. If they get an open rate of .001%, that's 10,000 opens. Although the 10 million is not targeted, once those 10,000 open, they are targeted to some degree. I say that because their interest was peaked enough to make them open the email.

    So now if only 1% of that 10,000 buys the product they sent the spam on, that's 100 buyers. If that sales earns them a $20 commission, they make $2,000. It's not an hoest way to make a living, but now maybe you understand why they do it.

    Same thing applies to a spambot that posts blog comments. If they spam 1,000 blogs, and get through 50 of those, and get 1 sale from each blog comment, it adds up.
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  • Profile picture of the author NikkiM
    You will never get rid of the spammers unless you get rid of the millions of idiots in the world. As long as spammers think that they have someone to market to, they will continue to spam.

    Not everyone on the internet is smart enough to recognize spam. Even worse, there are always people on the internet that will buy into anything they receive in their mail box, blog, even adds on websites.

    So, get rid of the simpletons and get rid of the spammers, otherwise we will have to deal with it.
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  • Profile picture of the author valerieSONORA
    Yeah Nikki it would be great it we could get rid of all the idiots of the world, but that's not gonna happen

    That settles it, I'm getting in the spamming business lol
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  • Profile picture of the author Bob Monie
    I believe that some spammers have developed custom software that is "set and forget" automated.

    I think part of the software is constantly skimming the google index for new blogs. Building a massive index of wordpress blogs they can use to auto spam.

    I recieved a spam comment, 12 hours after my blog was index in google. They are pretty quick.

    If they post comments to 1 million blogs and 10% of the blogs have auto-approved comments, thats 100,000 clickable backlinks with little work at all.

    I also think SEO newbies would pay for this sapm service without knowing what they are dong.
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