What are the bots/spammers trying to accomplish?

[Avaris]

This is not a 'how can we solve the problem' thread, but rather an attempt to understand motives. I am trying, and failing, to determine what the spam posts we so regularly see here are trying to accomplish.

They all have links, so persumeably they want us to click on them? But the threads are so obvious there is almost no way anyone would follow a link, even if conned into clicking the thread.

Is the mere prescence of the links the purpose? Something to do with search engine rankings based on links to pages perhaps?

Or is it somone with a grudge against the playground deliberately targetting us?

Can someone more tech minded explain the logic behind spammers?

[erikun]

For the spammers themselves - who are most likely hired people rather than bots - they are generally paid a certain amount to make a number of posts on the board. They just don't care what happens, beyond what they're paid to do.

For the people writing the spam, it's a matter of volume. If one person clicks on any one of the links, then viewing the advertisements on the website they visit will generate the spammer money. Out of 1000 threads, maybe one link gets clicked on... and so they try to set up millions of threads, or hundreds every day, in hopes of getting more clicks with that same 1000:1 ratio. It's the same logic behind spam emails.

In more practical terms, it's likely that someone clicked on one of the spam links from earlier. This told someone that they can get pageviews from advertisements here on the website, and so now we're getting floods of spam attempting to get just that.

[banthesun]

There's also the factor of having links to your page from a legit website helps push you up google searches, but apparently the forum upgrade was meant to prevent bots from benefiting from that. They might just not have realized it yet though.

[Whoracle]

Also, for every spammer that's not after clicks, but after scam orders ("REAL ROLEX NAO!", "I'm a nigerian prince" etc.), they actually WANT to be that obvious. Reasoning:

It costs them almost nothing to spam around ten thousands of links, but each person that falls for such a scam they have work: They need to talk to that person and complete the scam. By having atrocious grammar and making it really obvious, they make sure that only the most gullible of people actually respond to such scams. Those are the people that are most likely to make you money, and the least likely to just waste your time.

[Ravens_cry]

That's disturbingly ingenious. Of course, it doesn't stop people from scamming the scammers.

[Rawhide]

FYI - We have a couple of layers of protection in place to ensure that their links do NOT add to search engine rankings. So, as of the new forum upgrade, it doesn't help them that way anymore.

It might take them a while to learn that, though.

[factotum]

I agree with erikun--posting spam messages on a forum like this one costs a tiny, tiny amount of money compared to any legitimate advertising outlet, and it only takes a few people to click through for the "campaign" to be a success. There will always be people who click the links, too, either out of morbid curiosity or because they're not as adept at recognising a spambot as most. So, all they need to do is target popular websites with a fair amount of traffic and they're quids in.

[TuggyNE]

Is the mere prescence of the links the purpose? Something to do with search engine rankings based on links to pages perhaps?

This. PageRank and similar algorithms rely heavily on links (and the words used for links) to determine how significant a page is for searches. However, as noted, links from GitP* are now universally marked as being useless for the purpose (with rel=nofollow), so this is no longer a factor.

*Yes, even internal links made with [post] and [thread]. A little weird, but whatever.

[Fortuna]

This. PageRank and similar algorithms rely heavily on links (and the words used for links) to determine how significant a page is for searches. However, as noted, links from GitP* are now universally marked as being useless for the purpose (with rel=nofollow), so this is no longer a factor.

*Yes, even internal links made with [post] and [thread]. A little weird, but whatever.

Will this affect the ability of Google searches to turn up legitimate threads from this site, then?

[Grek]

If you post a link to a kitchens website on the playground, it doesn't improve the search rating of the kitchens site.
If you post a link to this site on some other site, it does improve the search rating of the playground.
Additionally, most of the threads on this forum that people want to see have important keywords like "Order of the Stick" or "recruiting" or "d&d" or "<insert name of homebrew class here>" that aren't found elsewhere on the web. Even if the playground has a low overall search rating, it's still going to be one of the highest for those key words.

[Jimorian]

You know one thing I find fascinating is how very little about the world of spammers actually gets out into the general consciousness. I mean, we may have this image of a spamming sweatshop in China, Russia, or Nigeria, but what do we really know about the people who end up getting involved in this?

Edit: Found something. Spamhaus' list of the worst 10 spammers in the world. (http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/spammers/) Their overall estimate is that 80% of worldwide spam is generated by around 100 hard-core groups. Still, has anybody who's ever worked these operations ever come out with a Tell-All book? Probably not if they value their life!

[Lord Torath]

Someone has written a book on the subject. I heard about it on NPR. It was about the spammers in Nigeria. Have to see if I can track down more info (and maybe a link to an article).

Edit: This may be the book, called "Spam (http://www.npr.org/books/titles/180370925/spam-a-shadow-history-of-the-internet)" of all things.

[Rawhide]

[post] and [thread] still use the old URL style of ?t= & ?p=, so this is probably why they get the nofollow treatment. Other internal links throughout the site, including via [url] don't have the nofollow treatment.

In general, you should use [url] rather than [post] or [thread], unless you desperately need to conserve space. They still use the old URL style, which needs to then be redirected to the current URL.

[Jimorian]

Someone has written a book on the subject. I heard about it on NPR. It was about the spammers in Nigeria. Have to see if I can track down more info (and maybe a link to an article).

Edit: This may be the book, called "Spam (http://www.npr.org/books/titles/180370925/spam-a-shadow-history-of-the-internet)" of all things.

Oooh, I may have to track down a copy. The excerpt is a bit dense with sociological technobabble, but I see where they're generally going with the thesis.

Unfortunately, I had far too much opportunity to see up close how the Nigerian spam scam worked when an uncle continually fell for them. Lost over $3M, his family, and pretty much everything and everybody else in his life and now scrapes by on Social Security, and STILL asks everybody around him for more money to send no matter how many times we've told him it's a scam. At some point there's nothing more you can do, and you have to stand back and just treat it as a psychological study on how these things manage to hook people.

[Ravens_cry]

Good old fashioned sunk cost fallacy. :smallsigh: