A new type of spam

**james438** · 07-30-2012, 07:16 PM

I have come across a new type of spam in my forums where a person will post a reply or start a thread where they list there 4 favorite songs , tv shows or movies and ask what favorites others may have. I do not see a link in the post or signature or profile or any type of advertising except for the person's name. The name is usually something common like jessica brown (all one word). The email seems to always be the person's name and a common email service like hotmail or gmail. I figure if I can find their identical post multiple times using a search then it is probably spam.

How are such posts helpful to the spammer? I figure if I can learn that I can better combat the spam. This does not appear to be from a spam bot since they can correctly state which day of the week begins with the letter "m".

**mlegg** · 07-30-2012, 07:51 PM

I see this tons daily over at G4TV.com's forums that I help run. I am thinking that just the posting all over is just helping get them higher in Google rankings. When I spot new user's with random posts I check out http://www.stopforumspam.com/ and also Google to see if in fact they are spammers before I blindly ban them.

**jscheuer1** · 07-30-2012, 07:55 PM

Who knows? The definition of spam is not advertisement. It's any unwanted, basically off topic and/or relatively meaningless junk that clogs up the forum/inbox, whatever. Here I would just guess that 99% of the spam we get is advertisement or a prelude to advertisement. That may be your answer. People will post throwaway stuff. Here it's like:

"That's nice."

or:

"Good Responses."

Usually it's a little longer than that, even:

"That was very worthwhile and helped me too, thanks."

That last one is hard to judge, it could be sincere. We generally don't allow it though. I call those "Me Too".

So, a few weeks pass and then they come back and edit their post with a link to some Viagra site or something. That's how it works.

Or they may not even be interested in that. With some I think they just want to "see their name in lights". That is see results on the search engines that somehow proves they exist.

Or . . . as I say, "Who knows?" If it's unwanted, off topic, and/or contributes little or nothing, it's still spam.

**james438** · 07-30-2012, 08:12 PM

Thanks. I hadn't thought about those last two where people return to edit their posts with advertisements or want to see their name in lights.

**williamsun** · 07-31-2012, 12:35 AM

One way to help fight what the OP mentioned is to make a new users group that all new users drop into the first 2 or 3 posts and make their posts mod approved. Of course that would not work in a high volume forum.

Just a thought.

**djr33** · 07-31-2012, 06:46 AM

There are various strategies that involve posting obvious spam to get quick search engine hits or posting subtle spam to sneak in a link or even a text reference to a site (or even perhaps a name, as John said).
Sometimes they also involve sneaky things like editing a post significantly later (which wouldn't trigger any sort of 'unread' alert for anyone to find it except search spiders), or the trickiest for you to spot-- using something that isn't visible, such as a transparent 1x1 pixel image, so that it gets the URL in there that way. We don't even see it, but we're aware of this enough to click 'edit post' to see what extra code might be hidden there, and if there's something hidden we'll delete the post and ban the user.

You're also right that there are some humans doing spam (maybe around 50% of what's out there) and attempting (to various degrees) to seem sincere. This may be to:
1) Create a spam post that looks legitimate.
2) To create a spam-magnet thread for other spammers (or just other accounts) to post spam links (often we get that here in the form of "What's the best X?" threads).
3) To post something generic but not from a bot to just get around filters. A topic that fits many forums is something like "my favorite movies".

Remember, if the post is up for a few hours, they might get a search engine spider hit. And if some of the links on some sites stay up for longer (or are never noticed) they get a lot. I'm not sure what a "lot" really means (how much does spamming really help SEO??) but they seem to believe it is important. It's a business. For us, it's not all that complicated-- we just notice what kind of posts might be spam (I often check any first time poster for signs of spam, or signs of non-spam, such as following the specified format on this forum), and we delete them-- something like killing flies, nothing more complicated than that. (That's not to say that once in a while there isn't something tricky, but on average it's easy enough to figure out.)

**bernie1227** · 07-31-2012, 08:05 AM

"That's nice."

or:

"Good Responses."

Usually it's a little longer than that, even:

"That was very worthwhile and helped me too, thanks."

I remember once, I was trawling the forum on a Friday afternoon, and I came across this one post, from a newcomer, (1 post), and all it said, in broken english, was "thank you for input sirs, please share all you know about forms"
And that was it. I wouldn't call it throwaway, but I wouldn't call it useful either.

**jscheuer1** · 07-31-2012, 08:34 AM

Something I don't think any of us has brought up is that sometimes a post is just garbage. It's not necessarily spam, but it's so unclear or unsuitable in other ways, too general, or too generic, etc., that rather than just assume it's spam and ban the user, we simply delete the post.

That will stop the person from coming back and editing it later, while still giving them a chance to make a new post later that might be legitimate, or on the other hand that might tip their hand if they really are a spammer.

And if we see one like that, or it's brought to our attention, we can check if there are others by the same person. If there are and a clear pattern emerges, it can be easier to know whether or not they're spam. We can then take appropriate action on all or on each of the posts, and for the user.