Philosophy spamers

[Linusthe2nd]

What do you suppose is the motive of all those idiot spamers on the Philosophy Forum?
Are these just mental cases? Are they all the same person? Clearly they have an ax to grind with the Philosophy Forum.

Linus2nd

 

[jonathan_hili]

Maybe it’s their statement on the utter vacuousness of life as a consequence of their nihilism? Or perhaps they’re just being pains!

 

[Polycarp1]

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.
Cicero

 

[balto]

Yeah, I’ve noticed that this subforum in particular seems to have been under attack for the past couple of months. I would think that it is being caused by spam bots and not directly by a person (although someone had to program the bot obviously). That’s how most spam is generated. You’ll notice the characteristic garbled text before the malicious links because the bot is attempting to perform “Bayesian poisoning” to use a bunch of words that the spam filter will not think constitutes a spam message, allowing it to get posted as a legitimate thread.

Polycarp1:

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.
Cicero

I like your explanation better Some of the spam threads make more sense than what some philosophers actually put forth as valid theories!

 

[captainrick]

When I was a moderator on another site, I could delete a thread instantly, gone completely and forever… These spam posts seem to stick around for awhile. Although inaccessible, they waste our time clicking on the title. Wonder why they can’t be deleted completely.

As to the OP question, maybe they make a few cents every time someone clicks on their links?

 

[PietroPaolo]

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.
Cicero

 

[GEddie]

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.
Cicero

+2.

That one’s worthy of a T shirt.

I know so many philosophical wannabes it’s crazy. Give someone a few lines of philosophy and they think they are wise; yet get 2 philosophers together and you will get 3 answers to the same question.

ICXC NIKA

 

[ThinkingSapien]

What do you suppose is the motive of all those idiot spamers on the Philosophy Forum?
Are these just mental cases? Are they all the same person? Clearly they have an ax to grind with the Philosophy Forum.

Motivation : Money.

It’s probably s spam bot that an individual is running on their own computer or from a network of spam bots running on hijacked computers. I’ve had trouble with them in the sites that I moderate before. When I come across them here I mark them as spam and leave a message so that others can see it has been reported.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Motivation : Money.

It’s probably s spam bot that an individual is running on their own computer or from a network of spam bots running on hijacked computers. I’ve had trouble with them in the sites that I moderate before. When I come across them here I mark them as spam and leave a message so that others can see it has been reported.

By " bot " I assume you mean an automated program. But how could anyone make money on something like that. And why pick on the philosophy forum as opposed to some other forum?

Linus2nd

 

[ThinkingSapien]

By " bot " I assume you mean an automated program. But how could anyone make money on something like that. And why pick on the philosophy forum as opposed to some other forum?

I don’t know why the philosophy forum would be specifically targeted. As for money, spammed can make money off of either the traffic directed to a site or for just getting the links visible out there on the web. There is also money to be made on raising the ranking of a site with respect to certain Google search words by getting other sites to link to it.

 

[balto]

By " bot " I assume you mean an automated program. But how could anyone make money on something like that. And why pick on the philosophy forum as opposed to some other forum?

Linus2nd

All you have to do is get one person out of millions to click on a malicious link and now you have another compromised computer that can host spam bots. Not only that but now all the user’s data is compromised and can be used to steal identities, credit cards, and bank accounts, or sold to people who want to steal it. In addition, I think advertisers actually pay spammers to send spam promoting their products. Why I don’t know, but apparently it is somewhat profitable or they wouldn’t be doing it.

 

[balto]

There is also money to be made on raising the ranking of a site with respect to certain Google search words by getting other sites to link to it.

Yeah, that’s a good point too, I forgot about that. It’s like a profitable form of “Google bombing.”

 

[Linusthe2nd]

We are definitely getting bombed. It is time the powers that be take some serious action to stop it. Perhaps they will have to start doing something like blog sites do, you know, " prove you are human. " That will slow them down at least.

Linus2nd

 

[ThinkingSapien]

We are definitely getting bombed. It is time the powers that be take some serious action to stop it. Perhaps they will have to start doing something like blog sites do, you know, " prove you are human. " That will slow them down at least.

I tend to find a hard time with those test (seriously). Captchas can be hard to read.

 

[balto]

I tend to find a hard time with those test (seriously). Captchas can be hard to read.

You and me both. Sometimes I have to flip through 4 or 5 of them to get one I can read. And eventually the spammers will figure out how to parse those images and then we’ll have to do something even more ridiculous to prove that we are human.

It could be that the philosophy subforum was compromised by a malicious user and the spam is originating internally from a virus. In addition, it could have installed a backdoor for other spammers to get through because I’ve noticed that we started getting Russian and Chinese spam recently. Maybe that’s something someone will want to check for. That actually happened to one of my email accounts last spring. I had to delete the email account, change all my passwords on a different computer, and run all kinds of anti-virus software on the compromised laptop. Then I started using Linux so I don’t have to worry about this kind of thing too much anymore . One spam message was sent from my account to my parents’ parish priest. I wonder how many years in Purgatory that earned me. I don’t know why this subforum would be targeted more than other subforums if it was just being done through the standard account creation.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Years ago I went to some ones house to fix a conputer. I see one of the owners computers doing something with text flying by quickly. I asked her what it was. She tells me it was a work-at-home opportunity where all she had to do is let her computer send out promotional materials. That is a really nice way of saying her computer was a spam bot. I told her it was not legal, but she didn’t care. I decided it was better to not fix her conputer.

I don’t know how long she was in it. But years later I found out she was in some trouble over helping people with bad credit get houses through what was essentially a form of fraud.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Years ago I went to some ones house to fix a conputer. I see one of the owners computers doing something with text flying by quickly. I asked her what it was. She tells me it was a work-at-home opportunity where all she had to do is let her computer send out promotional materials. That is a really nice way of saying her computer was a spam bot. I told her it was not legal, but she didn’t care. I decided it was better to not fix her conputer.

I don’t know how long she was in it. But years later I found out she was in some trouble over helping people with bad credit get houses through what was essentially a form of fraud.

Good for you. I bet she had a few choice words to say.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Seven spamers posted this morning. I think they are trying to put us out of business.

Linus2nd

 

[balto]

More likely they’re trying to have someone click on a malicious link to compromise their computer. There’s a new one posted today with a language that I don’t even recognize. Plus I saw a couple of them over in the traditional forum earlier today.

Was it always like this around here? I started visiting this forum regularly in summer of 2012 and I don’t remember it being like this.

 

[grannymh]

WARNING

Regarding Spam threads.

Please, there should be only one additional post with the word Reported.

We are not to add more posts to the spam thread.

The procedure is to use the red triangle to report the spam post. All that is necessary is to put the word Spam in the report and send it.

So that there will not be multiple reports, the reporting poster adds the simple post with the word Reported.

I realize that there are times when it takes time for a Moderator to deal with a bunch of spam threads across the Forums. As long as a particular thread has been reported, we have done our job.

There have been times when I reported a spam post and within a few minutes, the thread was deleted. Often, someone reports a spam thread within 25 or so minutes from its posting. This may not sound like a short time period, but we need to remember that multiple Forums can be hit by spam at the same time.

I agree with this thread in that it is recently, that we have been hit with an unusual amount of spam posts.

I assure you that Moderators and Techs are doing everything possible to combat spam. We would be surprised at the large amount of spam which does not make it to any Forum.

Why is CAF attacked? Our large audience shows that we are very popular. And we are Catholic!