A Slayer's Guide to Spammers

[Dannyalcatraz]

I was recently asked by another forumite about thë number of people I've reported lately- what they did to be reported, and what tipped me off.

Here's what's up: they're all spammers. Some are obvious, with a wall of text and links within the blather. Others are more subtle.

Tipoffs:

1) New poster, sometimes with several posts in rapid succession, especially across different sub-forums.

2) The post contains a partial quote from someone else in the thread presented as the spammer's own words (IOW, blatant plagiarism).

3) The post contains broken links or hidden links. The broken ones usually appear on my screens as little blue boxes. The hidden ones match the forum's background color. (Why this works for them, what effet they are hoping for with these invisible links, I have no idea.)

When I see someone suspicious, I quote the post, which reveals all the broken and hidden links, just to make sure. Sometimes, those links may be ambiguous enough that I need to check them out, just in case they were relevant. If they ARE relevant, I don't report.

If I'm unsure after all that, I DO report them, but with the caveat that I'm not 100% sure and they should investigate- sometimes, it's just a new poster with a less than perfect command of English- and I don't post the little "Reported" thing in the thread.

(Yes, that means you don't see everyone I report.)

Happy Hunting!

 

[Morrus]

The effects they are after aren't clickthroughs - it's search engine optimisation. The more sites that link to them, he higher their Google page rank will be, and the more traffic they'll get through Google searches. So the link can be hidden; they don't expect you to click on it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ahhhh...that I can understand.

The more I know, and all that.






Dannyalcatraz: Ranger, Favored Enemy- Spammers

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Ah, I see. Good stuff to know.

 

[renau1g]

I noticed that too Danny with some spammer yesterday, I couldn't figure it out. Thanks Morrus for clearing it up.

 

[Scott DeWar]

The effects they are after aren't clickthroughs - it's search engine optimisation. The more sites that link to them, he higher their Google page rank will be, and the more traffic they'll get through Google searches. So the link can be hidden; they don't expect you to click on it.

those sneaky b4$74rrrr . . . . .ah, nevernind

 

[Obryn]

I was pretty sure Google's new algorithms actually punish a site for this kind of SEO behavior.

-O