Spammers dirty tricks - list them here!

[Kay]

Are spammers really stupid or what? Well, I think they are but worse still they must think that we (mods/admins) are stupid too. I'm not talking about the Nokia and Nike rubbish - they don't even try to be subtle. I mean the people who actually think they can con you.

Over the years I think I've seen every dirty trick in the book that spammers use to try to con us. I'll list some. Can you think of any more?

- Q&A Joining with one identity, posting a question. Coming back with a new ID and answering their own question with a 'recommendation'.

- Going back and editing a post to add spammy links.

- Posting 'invisible' links in the body of their post.

- Joining to 'recommend' an amazing product or service they've just found.

- Posting fluff to get a sig link.

- Posting fluff to get that sig link seen.

- Asking for website reviews. Please review my cr@ppy website.

- Introducing their business not themselves.

There must be heaps more but for some reason I can't think of them right now. Add yours!

[rob]

URL in profile pages, then one non-spammy post but on most BB systems the profile link still appears to search engines as its in their 'drop down' profile.

[Clinton]

We had someone drop a link in his first post today. It didn't get published because he's new and all posts from newbies are held for moderation.

So, smartass, he figured he needed to build some post count first. He tried a one line fluff post. And again. In thread after thread after thread. His tracks show that he kept going back to his first post to see if it worked. Eventually after several posts and a lot of time mucking around and getting frustrated, he realised it wasn't just post count. I logged in today and by deleting his account wiped all his posts out in one click.

No damage done.

But, Kay, you have a good summary of the tricks they try in forums. My pet peeves are the ones they try by email. I often get personalised emails that start with something like, "I saw your site today and it occured to me that you might want to earn some more money ...." or the idiots who don't realise that if I've not replied to their spam it's because I'm not interested: "I have written to you before but have not received your reply"

I had a row yesterday with someone who sent a marketing email to a private address I don't use in a lot of places. When I challenged him he kept insisting that I had subscribed to his email list. I persisted and asked for proof and it turns out he got my email address from an affiliate program elsewhere that I had once joined some years ago to. So his new excuse was that his friend who owns that affiliate program passed my email address on to him so that he could "assist me" in my business. B*stards.

[Kay]

Rob, I don't know about the technical details of that but here's my understanding of it from our place.

People would join and put a URL in their profile. Never post, and them presumably skip off happily into the sunset thinking they'd just scored a free link.

Action 1. We stopped the membership list from being viewed by anyone except the admins.

2. We blocked the membership list from being spidered.

We told people - don't waste your time and ours by trying this because no one will see your link.

They still tried it, of course. Grrrr!

Step 3. And I love this one, which was an innovation by the person who helped us to revamp our site (not quite finished yet, so no comments about the site itself on this thread, please). Wait for it...

... anyone who hasn't paid for premium membership and is therefore not entitled to a link in profile, sig, or anywhere else, gets their link automatically replaced by a stock message promoting our subscribe page, or similar. Sheer genius!

A lot of people don't like it, but that's their problem. It ain't mine.

[Clinton]

... anyone who hasn't paid for premium membership and is therefore not entitled to a link in profile, sig, or anywhere else, gets their link automatically replaced by a stock message promoting our subscribe page, or similar.

I like that especially if you state "this user tried a fake signature which we've replaced with this message...."

Kay, new users here do not have access to their profile till they've built a certain number of posts at which time the system automatically "promotes" them. Do you not have a facility like that?

[Kay]

@ Clinton

I'm always arguing with people about emails and lists. We are, and always have been, strictly opt-in. Some of our competitors haven't done that and they boast about how many thousands of people they have on their lists. Bully for them. They're saying, "I spam 20,000 people every month!" Yeah, right.

Sometimes we even get idiots trying to buy our lists. No way.

PS: You can relax, guys, I'm having steak for my dinner tonight and I'll cook it rare (mmm, blood) so I won't need to go out hunting down and killing spammers. Well, not for a couple of hours anyway.

[Kay]

Whoops, we've got a bit out of synch.

I like that especially if you state "this user tried a fake signature which we've replaced with this message...."

Nah, we don't bother with stating that. Their attempt at self promotion simply gets replaced with our promotion. Automatically. What could be nicer?

Kay, new users here do not have access to their profile till they've build a certain number of posts at which time the system automatically "promotes" them. Do you not have a facility like that?

I honestly don't know. These techie guys never tell me anything unless I hammer the information out of them. But we don't need such a system. It's simple - pay or don't pay. You get privileges if you pay. You don't get them if you don't.

It's unpopular with a lot of people, most of whom were a waste of space anyway. And our premium members enjoy the clean and spam-free environment and absence of rubbish postings. I guess it's just a different business model.

[Clinton]

Oh, I'm not knocking the model, it's perfectly valid.

It's just that when I see something working successfully elsewhere I can't help wondering if it can be modified to our model.

Sorry, I've taken it a bit off topic.

Back to spamming tricks...

In today's news, Facebook spam

Facebook: ...we filed three lawsuits alleging violations of our terms and applicable law by defendants attempting to trick people on Facebook into signing up for mobile subscriptions and sending spam to their friends..While we’re fighting from our end, we need your help too. Be wary of suspicious-looking posts or messages, and report spam when you see it using the links located throughout the site..

No matter how big your spamming problems, there's a social networking site out there with bigger problems

[rob]

... anyone who hasn't paid for premium membership and is therefore not entitled to a link in profile, sig, or anywhere else, gets their link automatically replaced by a stock message promoting our subscribe page, or similar. Sheer genius!

Do you know of a good VB plugin that does that - inc payments etc?

[Kay]

@ Rob

We're on phpBB. I seriously considered VB, but there was a bit of a stink about them around the time we were making the move to revamp. Also, I discovered that Internet Brands had bought our main competitor. And now IB themselves have been bought up.

We wouldn't use VB for many reasons. Good luck to those of you who do.

VB were my top choice until I was told all the extra info about them. Maybe the techie guys aren't as bad as I'd thought about giving me info.