They're BAAAaaack!

Post Reply New Topic

Those spammers again.

what is the deal?

My first thoughts were "Not again."

The thread title here made me think of The Poltergeist when Carol Ann says it in the movie.

That movie scene is what I was referencing.

I have a hard time understanding the motivation of someone who spams. Maybe it is nothing more than an attempt to get attention

the important question is how do we keep these poltergeists in the dark realm where they belong?

Hire them to do black magic on themselves?

I didn't know Wrong Planet was built on a former cemetry.

Thanks everyone

The reports need to go in the section where we keep an eye on those reports.

I want to reiterate too... please don't post replies to the spammer threads because it actually makes them harder to get rid of! If I whack a spammer then his threads should automatically be deleted but if someone has posted replies to it the thread will remain, giving the impression that whoever replied first is now the spammer! So please don't reply to spammer threads.

I didn't know that. Sorry!

If someone is willing to do black magic, doesn't that kind of make people nervous about doing business with them? I'd think that it should. Also, based on what I understand about the nature of magic, both parties remain responsible for the effects of their actions, so paying for black magic causes even more misery than just doing it yourself. And yes, love spells count as black magic by any standard of which I am aware.

White magic is harder, sure, but bringing yourself more into harmony with your true self will certainly make anyone more attractive and serve as a defense against romantic predators as well. Grey magic tends to become black magic, so probably just stay away from it, okay.

I'm sorry too. Thanks for letting me know about that feature of the site.

But those threads become ghost threads and you can only see them when you view the user's posts from their profile. I have never tried replying to one of them to see what happens. Just something I have seen. The thread would be gone but the only way to access it would be going to someone's profile who have replied in that thread to see it.

^ All threads on the public forums are also accessible to Google and other search engines, irrespective of where they might appear on an index page - which means that locating what the spammers push is made easier and in many cases, this is the purpose of them posting here: keyword or link stuffing, to increase page hits.

We remove such threads because of that, because there's a risk that a member may fall for the scam - and because these threads are... annoying, irrelevant crap.

Spammers use software like XRumer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XRumer). This software can bypass a lot of "anti spam" solutions put in place, and if it can't you can train it. The "spammers" don't actually know what sites their spamming on. It's the software doing it all.

One thing it can't bypass is things that require human intervention such as "solve the jigsaw puzzle". These types of tests should be put in place when a user registers, and for the first 5 posts a new user makes. But, on a website aimed at people on the AS that's probably not a wise thing to do, as some won't be able to solve problems. It's a catch-22.

Why do they spam? Because it makes ALOT of money.