Death to Spammers!

[Jim Werbaneth]

We're infected by this noxious breed once again. I find it very frustrating, because I'm fresh out of bullets and I don't want to go to Nigeria anyway.

Of the last few episodes, there is one thing that I've noticed that might be a warning that a spammer infestation is imminent. First, you see a new member, who fits a certain profile. They're usually billed as female, though I doubt that, often from either Senagal or New York City. There might be a pic, and it might be either an attractive young female, or something like flowers.

The profile is populated with dreck. Lately it's been "i will tall you later" (sic) or "i will tell you later," pasted repeatedly. A couple of times, the person's favorite game was Tekken. Usually though, it's nonsense.

The first profile doesn't post anything, either comments or blogs, and doesn't send messages. It's pretty quiet for a few days.

Then comes a second profile, similar to the first, but not identical. That one is the severe irritant, sending lots of come-hither messages and comments. One can view the first profile as a recon unit, and the second as the main force of invaders.

At present, our recon unit is called rosemary, and the spewer of spam comments is princess.

That's the latest trend. We have seen people who just put up advertising profiles, with conspicuously self-promoting blogs. Those are easy to avoid, and don't overpopulate the site with their cybernetic crap.

The newer version is a little pernicious. However, I believe that the problem can be addressed more easily than it appears. Here's how.

Frequent participants should keep an eye on the list of new members. I do this all the time, usually to say "Welcome." But if you see a new profile that fits the general description of a spam recon, alert John Kranz of its appearance. That way it can be examined early. Then everyone's eyes should be open for the second wave of spam, so it and the offending profile can be deleted as soon as possible.

What say you?

[David Matchen]

Typically, you want to send a phalanx of flamethrower units in to flush them out into an open area so the snipers can get them.

Or is that ASL?

[Jim Werbaneth]

By my theory too, we're about to undergo another attack.

Here's the recon element: http://social.consimworld.com/profile/jcclemons32?xg_source=profile...

It's definitely a spammer either way, judging by the "About Me" field.

[Jim Werbaneth]

Here's another good candidate for a spammer:

http://social.consimworld.com/profile/JenThomas?xg_source=profiles_...

[Smitty]

Yep - so I said hi!

[Jim Werbaneth]

Well, you have an essential faith in the value of good manners and being polite. I'm seldom accused of either.

[Christine Van Schultz]

I have a dumb question, what possible benefit can someone get from spamming this site? I just can understand the mindset of people who do this kind of nonsense.

[Jim Werbaneth]

As I understand it, the spammer business model assumes that maybe one in several thousand recipients is going to respond. So they flood the net with tens of millions of spam mails, messages, comments and posts, to get the numbers up. If they can spam enough, even though people still respond at an extremely anemic rate, they'll make a profit.

To accomplish that, they use hordes of zombie computers, infected with malware to send out e-mails on command. This one though, I suspect, was purposely started by the spammer, as part of an offensive against a range of Ning.com sites. I Googled the message that we had, and it showed up all over some rap boards, as did princess' profile.

Perhaps one idiot out of all of us responds; by their business model that makes the whole obnoxious exercise worthwhile. Even if no one does, at least they gave it the old college try, and it was worth a shot.

The last spam infestation was especially stupid, annoying and doomed to failure. But it does fit in with the general idea of how they work.

[Tony]

Read somewhere that some blogs can get $2.50 per 1000 page views, and that is for legit sites.
So anyone clicks the spam link the get a view, they probably made $50 bucks easy for 10 minutes of coding.

[Christine Van Schultz]

Guys, thanks for the replies.

[Jeff Petraska]

It looks like sandera is everybody's new best friend. #$@$@!!!!!

[David Matchen]

Smyert shpamonam!

[Joel Tamburo]

The best way to stop this nonsense is to enable CAPCHTA on registration. A good strong CAPCHTA will stop the robots from registering. I run a message board and that is how I stopped the spambots. I know he has CAPCHTA enabled but I suspect the version is a weaker one.

This is the capchta site:

http://www.captcha.net/