Einstein's classic definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and over and over again and expecting different results. That would make spammers the most insane of all, hands down. Yes, I zap spammers at another forum and see this dysfunction, yet don't understand it. Spammers typically semi register during daylight then wait until around 2 am in the US to complete it, then put their nasty little ad. They often choose screen names that just looks very odd. Other dead giveaways are ads in the sig or product names as the screen names. Spambots are a joke....in their profile their currency is always "123456" and their Bio: "Man", other garbage info. All I do is check the n00bs for that day - registered and semi-registered. A few sites such as Stop Forum Spam I can enter their IP against the spammer's database....if it still looks suspect, I do an advanced Google search for only the last few days to see if the n00b joined 30 forums...often they already spammed and got banned a few hours ago. Bottom line is 99% of spammers can't hide from sites like Project HoneyPot or and advanced Google Search. And their IP's tend to come from about six or so parts of the world where the Prius is not all that common. The real mystery is what drives these spammers, esp. at sites where a tiny minority might stand for a couple of minutes before it's deleted....they don't last long enough for GoogleBots to jack up the client sites ratings, nor does the sigs remain....the revenue is often less than pocket change. So why do spammers attack sites as if there were a million dollars lying there, to maybe profit from a fraction of a penny? It seems like the worst OCD problem I've witnessed, worse than drug or sex addiction. Seriously, the only profit the common spammer makes is the same as a troller - to annoy. I can think of no quicker way of going broke than spamming forums. I picture a spammer as some creepy perv getting a kick as he posts about Nokia phones like the latter part of this video.
Its just their job. For about 14 cents per hour, they post, screen capture and prove to their masters they've done their job placing fake Brittany Spears video links, or phentermine drug info into their signatures. Most spam posts/registrations now are somewhat goofy posts that masquerade the real intent - SEO placements for what would appear as legit businesses (many actually are). SEO's are the newest and least spammy looking spams. MAny have hidden script and a 1 pixel link. Use the Edit Post button to look for code, if that's enabled in your forum. We use StopForumSpam (not the plug-in) as well as old fashioned detective work to squash the spammers in the act before their first post. I am an admin and the main spam killer guy at another big vB forum, and we regularly score 15-20 spammers per day, most before their 1st post. Network-tools dot com and other sites like it are helpful in resolving IP#'s, countries. But looking at the user pane info, and where they say they're from says a lot. GMT-12? Delete them now. Location: "newyorK", and timezone "Beijing, Perth, Singapore, Hong Kong" we will mark as more than suspect. SFS is behind the 8-ball by about a couple days in their DB of spammers. The best method I have found, and most reliable, is to merely google "username" forum posts. That alone is 90% effective. If the top 5 links are from <24 hours old registrations at iPhone sites, WebDev or Bad Astronomer forums, then you've got yourself a bot-like spammer, even if they've never posted. Why would a regular human bother registering at 10 or more forums every day? Of course, if they've actually posted somewhere, then just look at their post. Be careful not to place their web link from their home page field in your address bar and pressing enter. I've accidently got several viruses that way, just looking up what the prospective forum member might be up to. A fairly recent spammer tactic has been the "sleeper spammers." They register like everybody else - manually, and look very normal for about a week or more. They later add their poison siggy's and links into every benign post they've ever made. Very very difficult to detect. Captcha doesn't help. Forum reg questions don't help. They all get through - bots or not. Bugs the living crap out of me how they get past all the registration steps and all in the same exact minute. I'd love to have a reverse IP# electric zapper to stun every last one of them. If someone can write me code for that, I'd be forever grateful. But why do they do it? Probably beats working for a sweatshop factory at about the same rate per hour.
Yeah the SEO ones are a pain. Sometimes it is hard to tell if it is genuine or not. Usually a broken English post asking a question. Sometimes trying to compare product A with product B at <this url>. I am sure they get a few people that way. I too block spammers on a different forum and it gets annoying.
I once worked as a "chaser" in the Marine Corps. This meant I escorted Marine prisoners during their administrative processes leading to their discharge. About 85% of them were just too young and immature to be Marines and no problem. You told them what to do, treated them with respect, and they did what was needed. About 10% were well adjusted criminals who knew what they were ... as much as they were self-aware. Again, they wanted out and understood it was a process. We were working for a common goal, their freedom from the Marines. But I had one, the 5% who was a sociopath. This was the one problem child who decided to do a 'sit down' instead of walking to his next, out processing station. I was stuck but managed to ask two fellow Marine who were passing by to help 'carry him' to his next station. After about 50 ft., my problem child decided he could walk but the other two Marines were quite willing to walk along with us. He is my model of a sociopath. The chief characteristic of a sociopath: people are objects - you and I might see others as humans, people with feeling, wants and aspirations. But the sociopath sees us as objects that they use for their pleasure or purposes. Spammers and other network abusers don't dialog. They are selectively deaf, hearing only what they want to hear (or read.) But it is a sham, they are living in an alternate universe and we are nothing more or less than objects to their interests. We always hold out hope but sociopaths live in a different reality. Only when the universe steps in and supplies corrective pressure do they get better. But nothing you or I or anyone else says or posts can separate them from their folly. Yet, occasionally their predictability can sometimes be handled. Bob Wilson
Not sure I would classify them as sociopaths. Just people wanting to make some money. Like said above, they post, screenshot it, and submit it to their overlords for payment. The boss man seems like a sociopath that preys on those less fortunate to get them to do his/her/its dirtywork.
It's almost all business now. There was a time when most malware was written for evil fun or to make a point about being a skillful programmer, but those days are mostly gone. Now it's part of organized crime. Tom
As DavidA has noted, I've seen more "sleeper spammers". One was very sneaky and thought Stop Forum Spam might have made a mistake, but there was a rash of other spammers from Manila that week with similar personalities, so I got rid of him and he has visited five times since! The internet is a place many think common sense and manners can be discarded - fallacy. Even if you throw in that adage: "It's the Internet" the business sense of spammers seems to be a single-digit IQ. The site I help run may be spammed as much as sites that let spam sit a day or two....you would think spammers would concentrate on "easy sites". Apparently they spend as much time on sites like the one I moderate where 98% of spammers are banned before they post, and a small minority of those that get thru last more than a couple of hours.
Spammers might strike a nerve more easily with me due to their introduction a decade ago. My internet provider back then went bankrupt, my account was transfered to a new provider. What I found out after the fact is the old site was purchased for mass emailing and old customers like me were on their spam list. So to my horror I got multiple times a day porno spam. This breaks every rule in my marketing class of treating potential customers with respect....the XXX ads were insulting my manhood in graphic language....if this was a door salesman I guarantee on his first day of the job he would be in an ICU. My point again is the business model spammers use is STUPID!!!! I remember back then a man was on trial after he emailed a death threat to the client that spammed him on some male-enhancement product...he was acquitted....I hope the client had to assume his court charges. I don't condone death threats - I simply have no sympathy for any client that willfully spams. _________________________ While I try not to profile n00bs by the location of their IP, some are all but guaranteed to be spammers. Of 1200 spammers that visited CleanMPG, nobody from Russia or the Phillipines was not a spammer. Very few from China, India, or Pakistan that join are not spammers....I dig deeper and sadly, I frequently find conclusive evidence they ARE spammers. I've noticed that some spammers change IPs from one part of the world to another, say from Eastern Europe to Indonesia....there may be no telling where they are actually from. My proposed solution is at the G20 summit a resolution to legalize DOS attacks on confirmed mass email sites....I distinguish those spammers from the zombie computers they hijack - don't know about how to deal with that.
One good aspect of all these spammer stories is that it makes in clear how good we have it in North America.
Another question about spammer behavior: Why do so many of them semi-join during the daylight hours, then stop at email confirmation? Moderators see this easily and it broadcasts: "Be right back at 1am your time...see my Nokia phone ad." They would be stealthier if they completely joined.
Not sure about that. Cost of living differs quite a bit, quality of living not as much. Lots of places in India are very nice (arguably better than a few american cities) yet it costs almost nothing to live there compared to the equivalent american city. So their wages are also scaled down. You can live quite comfortably on $5000USD year when an apartment in a posh neighbourhood in Mumbai is about rs8 per sqft. So 1000sqft apartment in a high end neighbourhood is Rs. 8000, which is $170USD. An average apartment would be in the Rs 4000 or so which is $85USD. So they may only make $50 to spam a few hundred sites, but it pays over half their month's rent. So assuming a 1000sqft apartment in a big city like NYC which costs probably $2000/mo, if someone offered you $1000USD to sit infront of a computer for a few days and post a copy/pasted message into a few forums, would you do it?
It was a more abstract comment referring to the fact that you have to have third world conditions to provide that motivation on a large scale. If I was starving, I would be a lot more likely to do anything for survival that I would consider "wrong" in my present position. It certainly was not an insult for those that have less to start with.
