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Good news! (not actually good for you, and neither for me)

Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 12:56 pm
by Shirluban
If I do correctly my job, you should haven't seen the last spams (~1/month since last December).

I was wondering what was their point to post either:
- Irrelevant, totally out-of-subject, barely making sense, comments like
"Nice surprise about this shorter form. Can you tell us what it is you are talking/writing about?
Has any info. about this shorter form been posted before (and i just missed it)? " (found in a topic about a missing forum link).
- Meaning-less passkeys comments like "thanks for the nice post..." (it's really the full citation, identified as spam by other infos).
- Copy-past of another post, put into a totally unrelated topic.
All of them with NO links in the post, NO links in the sign, NO links in the profile, and NO advertising of any kind*.

Thanks to one of these spammers who self-betrayed today, I've discovered what the point of these spams is:
1) Lure the modos to think these non-ad posts are legit, despite being useless.
2) Few days after, come back and edit them to add advertising links. (Editing a post don't put it up into the "recent topics" list, and don't flag it as unread, so it pass unnoticed.)

I think only one had successfully completed this process, as well as step #3: being deleted and banned.

It's was just to share the "joy".
Thanks for reading.


* And neither about nitrogen-monoxide nor Nobelium.

Re: Good news! (not actually good for you, and neither for m

Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 1:29 pm
by wavemotion
I knew you'd eventually catch on to me :p


Seriously - good work and kudos on the vigilance. The spam here is virtually unnoticeable to me (and I visit most every day).

Re: Good news! (not actually good for you, and neither for m

Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 4:45 pm
by Tom Sloper
Shirluban wrote:Thanks to one of these spammers who self-betrayed today, I've discovered what the point of these spams is:
1) Lure the modos to think these non-ad posts are legit, despite being useless.
2) Few days after, come back and edit them to add advertising links. (Editing a post don't put it up into the "recent topics" list, and don't flag it as unread, so it pass unnoticed.)
Yes, that's exactly the pattern. I moderate three other forums, and my spam radar tingles whenever I read "thanks for this nice post" or anything that tries to sound participatory without being substantive. If not deleted/banned, a spam sig invariably crops up shortly after.