Forum spam
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spam is the posting of advertisements, abusive, or unneeded messages on Internet Forums. It is generally posted by automated spambots.
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[edit] Spambots
Spambots are automated programs designed to register on forums, disseminate spam, and leave. They usually supply a fake name, freebase email address, and sometimes mask their true IP address. Spammers can set the message that the spambot will post. Most spambots target one specific forum software or hosting company. Spambots are easy to identify by the nature of the message they leave, or the links in the signature. A typical post contains no topical content, but is accompanied by either spam links in the post itself, or in the user's signature. Some spambots will never post, and rely on the links in their signature to increase their search engine visibility. Looking up the spambot's user name with a search engine will often reveal thousands of registrations in unrelated forums.
[edit] User Spam
Spam is not restricted to just spambots, however. Users that post repeated, unnecessary messages, often for the sake of humor, are considered spammers. Many forums employ a spam forum to subvert the urge to spam, but it is often a problem outside of the spam forum. Spamming is harshly frowned upon in most forums.
A somewhat famous forum spammer, known as Eternity Absol, has been attacking MUR and Serebiiforums. She also goes by many other names: Choyobinshe, Lady Choy, Lady Spam, and Golden Sky.
[edit] Types of Spam
Most spambot forum spam consists of links, with the dual goals of increasing search engine visibility in highly competitive areas such as weightloss, pharmaceuticals, and gambling, and generating more traffic for these commercial websites. Some of these links contain code to track the spambot's identitity if a sale goes through, when the spammer behind the spambot works on commission.
Spam posts may contain anything from a single link, to dozens of links. Text content is minimal, and usually innocuous.
Alternately, the spam links are posted in the user's signature, in which case the spambot will never post. The link sits quietly in the signature field, where it is most likely to be harvested by search engine spiders than discovered by forum administrators and moderators.
[edit] Spam Prevention
- Flood control: this forces users to wait for a short interval between making posts to the forum, thus preventing spambots from flooding the forum with repeated spam messages.
- Registration control: some forums employ CAPTCHA routines on their registration pages to prevent spambots carrying out automated registrations. The most effective of these appears to be Kittenauth, which asks the prospective new member to select a specified class of image from a selection (e.g. "select the three kittens"). This has shown good results in use, as opposed to the standard alphanumeric CAPTCHA which has been bypassed by spambots for some time now.
- Registration restrictions: applying careful restrictions can seriously impact bogus and spambot registrations. Examples: forbidding new users to specify a website in their profile (since linking to their website is the primary goal of spambots); blocking registrations entirely from certain domains which are a major source of spambots (e.g. China, Russia, and Brazil); checking for spam indicators in the user names & emails; requiring new users to be authenticated by a forum administrator before allowing them to post.
