I don't get spammers - they are trying to sell something? In college and the real world I was taught when selling to put my best foot forward and be respectful of the audience - spammers tend to do the polar opposite. This makes me wonder if they are really trying to sell anything, but are actually trollers. As a matter of principal, I NEVER buy anything unsolicited. I realize a bunch of senseless things go on, and I'm attempting to find a rhyme or reason. The types that would buy hard core porn are probably going to adult sites anyway, so why put it at PC? It makes no business sense! The majority of members live in North America, so trollers and esp. spammers tend to do their dirty work at 1-5am Central Standard Time, when moderators tend to be away. Do it seem to happen on weekends more than weekdays? - again I suspect trollers posing as spammers. Maybe spambots can get thru - can they? If it's actual people - I just don't see the revenue to justify the effort. _____________________________________ The PriusChat moderators do a super job of dealing with spammers and trollers - I'm just venting at the general internet envirnoment that make it easy for them. I'd love a change that would crash their spamming party by running up their expenses, e-bombing them to death, legally doing denial of service attacks on verified spammer sites, etc... Maybe someone has some info on what these dirtbags do and what makes them tick.
The only reasoning I can think of might be click-through traffic. Perhaps they get a minor payment for each person who clicks on their link. Maybe they are just looking for a few more bucks. Additionally, perhaps they know that Google spiders are constantly looking for active links. Maybe if they throw their links out there, Google will move their sites higher in their "relevance" rating. Either way, they don't last too long around here.
One thing you need to realize is that most web forum spammers are using automated software that allows them to spam tens of thousands of forums at once. The software takes care of everything, including user registration and registration confirmation. There's a good chance the spammer doesn't even know about the existence of the forums they're spamming and they're just using a list of forums that they bought or which came with the software. I was totally disgusted the first time I saw an ad for the software.
