Spambots

Mandelbrot

Here they come again ...
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2411908

canterswest

Mandlebrot, I read on Wikipedia what forum spambots are. Why are these posts appearing on this forum, do you think? It is people working a program as opposed to just a program with nobody behind it?


Wikipedia says:




Forum spambots surf the web, looking for guestbooks, wikis, blogs, forums, and other types of web forms that it can then use to submit bogus content. These often use OCR technology to bypass CAPTCHAs. Some spam messages are targeted towards readers and can involve techniques of target marketing or even phishing, making it hard to tell real posts from the bot generated ones. Other spam messages are not meant to be read by humans, but are instead posted to increase the number of hyperlinks to a particular web site, to boost its search engine ranking.....




One way to prevent spambots from creating automated posts is to require the poster to confirm their intention to post via e-mail. Since most spambot scripts use a fake e-mail address when posting, any email confirmation request is unlikely to be successfully routed to them. Some spambots will pass this step by providing a valid email address and use it for validation, mostly via webmail services. Using methods such as security questions are also proven to be effective in curbing posts generated by spambots, as they are usually unable to answer it upon registering.

Mandelbrot

fermi gave the probable explanation earlier in this thread (or it might have been one of the related ones).
i.e.
From your Wikipedia quote :

posted to increase the number of hyperlinks to a particular web site, to boost its search engine ranking.....

fermi

It's all to do with search engine ranking. Not necessary even for clickable links. Instead often simply site names, telephone numbers etc, brought up in results lists for search terms in major search engines. Much of the time they are only interested in what is brought up in the search engines results list, not even in all cases expecting or requiring a click through directly, but just wanting their site name or phone number high up in the results list.

From the other thread when we had the Korean ones, but equally valid in principle for the black magic ones...

fermi wrote: »

That's because you are going the wrong way around.

Someone Googling say (casino) in Korean will see pages of results containing those casino urls.

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=%EB%A7%89%ED%83%84%EC%B9%B4%EC%A7%80%EB%85%B8

It's not designed to throw up direct links to the sites in the results, but the url of their sites show in the page results from other sites that they then hope people will type in/copy/paste into the url bar to visit. Or click through to follow any live link that might be there.

Example:

marleyboy

Interesting post Fermi. Yet I cannot imagine many people would want to go to the trouble of copy\pasting the URL from an obvious spam post.

fermi

It's not aimed at us, ultimately, so you can't assess it by our terms of reference or what we might do. While not wishing to denigrate, it is aimed at displaying those sites in search results to people in other parts of the world (mostly) who are far less savvy - tech and otherwise - in these things and who can and do think

"that site/phone number is mentioned 10 times on Google when I search for how to cast a black magic spell on my husband. I'll type that in or try that."

Sad but true that they are playing to the lowest common denominator, or the stupid or the gullible, but there are enough of those people across the globe to be worth their while.

It's like most of these things. 99% of people who they are pointed out to say they would never be that stupid or gullible, yet the 1% (or more if not admitting it) left over make these scammers more than enough to make up for the rest.

It is a numbers game in the end.

Mandelbrot

A different approach? :think:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=68805460&postcount=218

canterswest

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2412128
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2412126
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2412127
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2412123
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2412133
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2412136

canterswest

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=black+magic+mantra+in+mumbai

Black magic it works!

MSE should be doing more not to publish so much spam.

canterswest

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=maya+jal+black+magic
https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=black+magic+tricks+in+new+dehli

MSE writes like the black magic spammers, it came up alongside spammers in Google search.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/tips/26-11-2014/
http://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2014/12/12/sadly-no-morrisons-9-baileys-but-no-need-to-berate-me/


The blog post I added as I remembered reports of Martin Lewis appearing on ITV 'predicting' a magic-like price for Baileys if you went to Morrisons. A lot of people believed him, because it was on national television. The price never appeared, not much different to believing black magic imo.