Chinese spammers taking over

ZZ · 03-21-2011 -- 09:18:50

Is it just me or are these Chinese spammers pretty much taking over the forum? They all have profiles too. And hey, look over to the right and you'll see fellow members like "yyellower", "Yazeete", & "gossippymen" all have March birthdays too.

jimmyc · 03-21-2011 -- 09:24:56

did you wish them happy birthday?

USMCPMEL · 03-21-2011 -- 09:25:39

The worst thing is to that it never makes sense. If you take the time to look at the posts there is usually not a link for you to purchase anything. Of course I just looked at the latest spammer and he does have links throughout his post. However the post itself still makes very little sense.

CalibratorJ · 03-21-2011 -- 09:33:14

If only there were an admin lurking around.....

ZZ · 03-21-2011 -- 09:47:02

Quote from: jimmyc on 03-21-2011 -- 09:24:56
did you wish them happy birthday?

Oh yeah...Happy Birthday!

jimmyc · 03-21-2011 -- 13:02:25

Quote from: USMCPMEL on 03-21-2011 -- 09:25:39
The worst thing is to that it never makes sense. If you take the time to look at the posts there is usually not a link for you to purchase anything. Of course I just looked at the latest spammer and he does have links throughout his post. However the post itself still makes very little sense.

i think the idea is to get in as many keywords as possible, kind of like filling out a government resume.

USMCPMEL · 03-21-2011 -- 13:07:49

I guess that makes sense but 99% of people will just delete these because it is giberish.

Hawaii596 · 03-23-2011 -- 10:06:13

I am not at all versed in spamology (waste of a big word on little people), but a nerdy friend tried explaining to me that it is done by spambot software. I run a totally different website from this one (missions work related - connected to church). We have a place where you enter some personal info and hit the submit button. I get these crazy meaningless submissions from spammers. According to my nerd friend (I mean that in a nice way), they use automated programs that search the web for sites with submit buttons, and automatically dump their garbage info somehow to the website. One theory is it has to do with how people make money on the web with the pay per click concept. So if they dump links in certain places, it somehow causes some pay per click activity that eventually finds its way back to their pockets (pure greed - stealing).

That's my poorly researched two cents worth on the topic.

scottbp · 03-24-2011 -- 09:37:14

The webmaster needs to put a CAPTCHA or some other spam-bot preventer on the site... Some sites email an authentication reply back to whoever registers (and won't allow "anonymous" email domains like yahoo, hotmail, etc.), and others have a "probationary" period where you can log on, but can't post something for x number of days; by then the bot has moved on. A lot of classic car enthusiast forums employ those sort of countermeasures.

Hawaii596 · 03-24-2011 -- 11:35:56

My website is a few years old, and the guy who actually does the programming stuff is a full time high level manager at a major semiconductor company. He is building our other church website right now. But he and I discussed putting a simple CAPTCHA (never heard that term before) on it. We thinking of a gif or jpg photo of a weird word or something that can't be harvested by Spambot programs, and adding it in as a requirement for the submit form. I'd consider trying it, but I have pretty much zero web programming skills. So although I have all the passwords to get into the site, no touchy for me.