All the junk threads about support numbers and cash apps. Why?

dinglebert

I notice that there must be around 20-30 of these threads a day which disappear as soon as they are reported.  What I can't work out is why people are going to the trouble of registering to then post them.  They are of course nonsense but there appears to equally be nothing to be gained.  There is no link to click to cause problems, the actual text is pretty much the same each time but makes little sense.  What do they gain by posting these?  Can't see the scam at all

MovingForwards

Spam, promotion, gets the details on the web and attempts to make it look like a legitimate business when people quickly look into it.

dinglebert

MovingForwards said:

Spam, promotion, gets the details on the web and attempts to make it look like a legitimate business when people quickly look into it.

There is no business in these posts.  Thats what I don't understand.  They are selling nothing, they are not trying to get you to go anywhere or give any information.

MovingForwards

It's the name that gets put out online, not necessarily selling / scamming anything with what's posted on MSE, but the wider web where any searches / pop ups / adverts would lead to.

dinglebert

MovingForwards said:

It's the name that gets put out online, not necessarily selling / scamming anything with what's posted on MSE, but the wider web where any searches / pop ups / adverts would lead to.

I do understand what you are writing but the only names on the threads are for the likes of apple or kaspersky. They are not advertising themselves.

MovingForwards

But probably not the legitimate company, a fake one set up where it leads to a scam, fake sale or something else.

The forum have been battling these posts for months now.

dinglebert

MovingForwards said:

But probably not the legitimate company, a fake one set up where it leads to a scam, fake sale or something else.

The forum have been battling these posts for months now.

Yes I understand that but there is no link to any fake or indeed real company.  Just putting apple in a post does not make it likely I will search for apple and find a fake site.  There is no connection.

fwor

Essentially it's about search engine manipulation. They are not interested in selling anything to users of this forum (or at least, not directly). They are exploiting the fact that Google, and Bing, and Yahoo and all of the other search providers have webcrawlers that constantly index MSE to pick up new content and include it in their search results.

So anyone searching for "Cash App Customer Support" will see the spam thread - and associated phone number - high up in their search results. The fact that the spam thread may already have been deleted by the time the search has completed doesn't matter, because the scammer's phone number is visible without viewing the thread. They then phone the scammer's phone number and get scammed into paying money for valueless and unauthorised support.

As long as they can keep flooding forums like this with spam, they will keep doing it. All we can do is keep reporting it as spam, to minimise the effect on other forum users. Maybe at some point in the future MSE will implement source IP addresses filtering, though even then, I doubt it will help much...

In case you're not aware, clicking the Report button and choosing Spam does have a useful effect, because it only takes a small number of this type of report for the post to be removed.

dinglebert

fwor said:

Essentially it's about search engine manipulation. They are not interested in selling anything to users of this forum (or at least, not directly). They are exploiting the fact that Google, and Bing, and Yahoo and all of the other search providers have webcrawlers that constantly index MSE to pick up new content and include it in their search results.

So anyone searching for "Cash App Customer Support" will see the spam thread - and associated phone number - high up in their search results. The fact that the spam thread may already have been deleted by the time the search has completed doesn't matter, because the scammer's phone number is visible without viewing the thread. They then phone the scammer's phone number and get scammed into paying money for valueless and unauthorised support.

As long as they can keep flooding forums like this with spam, they will keep doing it. All we can do is keep reporting it as spam, to minimise the effect on other forum users. Maybe at some point in the future MSE will implement source IP addresses filtering, though even then, I doubt it will help much...

In case you're not aware, clicking the Report button and choosing Spam does have a useful effect, because it only takes a small number of this type of report for the post to be removed.

Thanks for info.  I report these all the time.

MallyGirl

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to report spam - some boards seem to be targeted more than others and this one seems to be popular with spammers. I try and keep an eye on things appearing but I have a day job too.

sourcrates

Please do report them as spam.
A lot of my time is taken up deleting them, so the more help the better.
Thanks all.