My apologies, I did not see that this thread was already closed. But I thought it may be of interest to some how people try to spam Mobileread. So I will keep this post for reference purposes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Valloric
Still, I honestly thought it was a person, not a bot.
|
It's probably something inbetween. There are various tools out there that allow auto-registration on popular forums, while circumventing the captcha, and subsequently auto-posting random spam and scam. We do have a online check for new users, but sometimes spam gets through, and then we have to deal with it manually.
Here is how one of these tools describes itself:
Quote:
Why posting messages in forums is more efficient than spamming through email?!
See for yourself. E-mail spam has been annoying people for a long time now, and quite efficient ways of fighting unsolicited email have been developed and made publicly available. For an email spammer every 1 out of 1000 emails reaching a potential reader is already luck because 999 emails are blocked by spam filters implemented both by ISP's and home users alike. Forums make it way different. These are places people come to read voluntarily. Any posted message will be read at least by one moderator. But a well-composed message with correctly placed links in its body will initiate a live discussion over it, leading to clicks and high rankings in Search Engines. It's not just efficient – it's smart to a degree where most people would not believe software to be capable of.
|