What's the latest SPAM game?

[Diggin It]

Bandwidth? You're dating yourself. :laughing:

Lots or rural people are currently on satellite or cell type services that meter bandwidth. And unfortunately, all too many are still left with dial-up as their only option.

 

[oosik]

You are absolutely right - Diggin it. My internet provider is HughesNet and they DEFINITELY meter my bandwidth. Out here its either HughesNet or smoke signals. I DO NOT have a land line of any kind. Same with TV - Dish. Telephone is cell - when it works.

 

[Wagtail]

They are tricky and hide their referrer links well - usually provide the link back in the user's profile and not the article. That way every post of their's links back to their website indirectly.

If there is a way to flag new users posting web links in their profiles for approval you can quickly blacklist their accounts. Usually these guys link back to SEO search optimization websites...how's that for irony...

You can be really draconian and start blacklisting posters by country IP but you will start losing customers in Africa, Asia and Eastern Block countries. Do you get a lot of TBN users in Ivory Coast? ;-)

Ta for the further information... from one of the abnormal people who aren't a-bed whilst the normal moderators are sleeping. (14hrs ahead of EDT)

 

[California]

Yep, in a post in the kubota forums, it got auto-linked to Kubota's website. So it's probably something selective and advertising based, and arranged through the owners of TBN.

IT'S NOT MALWARE!]

It's not quite malware but for a while my ISP didn't like some intermediate service that diverted any mention of Harbor Freight on TBN. Apparently so that the mention (not link) could be counted for affiliate marketing rewards or something. For a few days I got scary full screen blood-red warnings of doom - generated at my ISP - while that diversionary service remained on somebody's blacklist. Apparently in some other context they had served malware instead of, or along with, allowing a link to reach its apparent destination.

Typing kubota anywhere on TBN becomes a link in my experience. Let's see if this one does.

Update: The first mention of kubota - in the post I cited above - is a link. As you said, subsequent use of the word does not become a link.

 

[4570Man]

I haven’t noticed the Kubota link thing. Maybe it doesn’t happen on iPhones. Edit. I just viewed the site from a computer and quickly found several Kubota links which link to the Kubota website.

 

[California]

Re spammers - On a smaller VB site where I'm a moderator we asked new members to put something related to the site focus, in their mandatory About Me part of the signup. Similar to responding to a captcha.

I think that blocked some bots. And in reviewing questionable posts we found some real nonsense in the About Me's - sufficient to conclude that the 'new member' was some boiler room operation. Plonk!

 

[4570Man]

So I just thought of this. Wouldn’t limiting the word count in the title for new members make their game useless. All the ones I’ve seen have a fairly long website “link” in the title.

 

[newbury]

So I just thought of this. Wouldn稚 limiting the word count in the title for new members make their game useless. All the ones I致e seen have a fairly long website 斗ink in the title.

Or character count? I just reported on this am that was 1 word, a link.

 

[4570Man]

Or character count? I just reported on this am that was 1 word, a link.

Every one I’ve seen from the last couple weeks has been a 1 word dead link. I think if you prevent that you ruin their game.

 

[RayfromTX]

We don't get nearly as much spam on the board I moderate on and it is similar in size. I'm not sure what we do that this site doesn't do but if we had as much as is being reported here we would go to war. I do notice that this site is showing 7,000 visitors right now which seems high. Our site only shows 1,000 guests. Member participation is similar and we have more threads and 50% more posts. We have about 20 new members per day. I'm not sure about this site. We use zenforo. I'm not sure about this site. @muhammad ?