I can't prove this, but based off a few posts, I'd ask this question.
Why is it that spambots seem to spam forums where spamming is not allowed and where the admin hasn't asked for it, versus forums asking and advertising for people to spam their site and spambots don't spam it at all?
Well my guess is they can read.
IMO spambots search for the same topic which they want to post. I've seen dozens of posts here on mybb.com where spambots posted with the same or relavant topic.
In the forums where they asked to post is most likely not a target for them.
Think about it; it's reverse psychology. You create a new forum without captcha, add a few boards, get a few backlinks (Bots often follow forum links on forums they are spamming), make a few odd topics, but don't say that the forum is for spam. The spam will build up on it's own.
(2011-05-09, 05:29 PM)Aristotle Wrote: [ -> ]Well my guess is they can read.
I thought they were just fake people created by PHP scripts told to register on a forum XD
(2011-05-09, 05:45 PM)Malcolm. Wrote: [ -> ]Think about it; it's reverse psychology. You create a new forum without captcha, add a few boards, get a few backlinks (Bots often follow forum links on forums they are spamming), make a few odd topics, but don't say that the forum is for spam. The spam will build up on it's own.
Strange how they do this though. Maybe they are paid only to spam on forums where the rules say you can't spam?
(2011-05-09, 05:58 PM)Shukaku Wrote: [ -> ]Strange how they do this though. Maybe they are paid only to spam on forums where the rules say you can't spam?
They are usually paid to spam on high page ranking, high traffic forums/blogs/guestbooks/etc...
But there are some that are paid to find any of them and spam any of them.
They get paid very very low amounts, less than 5 cent per account/link/thread/post depending on the request.
Considering they are mainly based in developing countries, and they can create thousands of accounts per day, it's not a bad income, but initially ruins the internet.
Another thing I remembered is that it only seems to be your average website like MyBB.com and such that are affected: sites running the Ruby on Rails infrastructure seem to be completely unaffected as I've never had one spambot register on any installation of Redmine I've been a member of.
Advertising in places where people don't expect ads to be the chances are bigger that unsuspected users click on the spam link. On special ad-sites the ad just gets lost between the other ads
