*** A lesson in detecting spam *** (was previously titled: RSS Creation - Need Help)

I'm not sure I really understand, but if you want to generate RSS feeds, then you're looking for a feed creator. I use my own homegrown version, but there's places like FeedBurner that do this for you as well.

I was going to delete this entire thread, but thought I'd leave it up as a good example of the evolving techniques used by spammers.

Look at the post by soft4you: it seems like a genuine request for help doesn't it? Poor Kyle even answered it, I would have done too and was about to start searching around the net for RSS creators. But then, oh look, a different member called spoocky has the answer! Why the product he uses fits the problem exactly, but the post is a bit suspicious: why has he written the name of the product in block capitals? Why is an RSS feed creator so important to him that he 'can't program without it'?

There's nothing wrong with a shameless plug for your own product, if the question was genuine and the product fits the bill. But this question wasn't genuine at all, you see: spoocky and soft4you both have the same IP address. They are the same person. We don't like spamming around here, usually it's just deleted, but in this case the person has gone that extra step to self-promote. So am leaving this here just to alert everyone to the kind of scams they might be faced with on their own sites..

Has anyone else seen increasingly complicated spamming attempts like this on their sites? Unfortunately our multiple-personality spammer won't be joining the conversation: am about to hit the big red perma-ban button.

Damn, and I thought I was helping.

Kyle wrote: Damn, and I thought I was helping.

Sorry, don't want to dishearten you! You'll probably help someone else who comes to this thread through a search engine.

Greg wrote: IMO the post made me think something was up when they said they use Dreamweaver AND Front page

Hehehe, that's a good point. Nice bit of keyword spamming.

Thanks JeevesBond for leaving that up. I've never thought to look for something like that. It's nice to learn from the moderators now and then instead of the thread going *poof*.

Yeah, spammers get too intelligent over time, I even encountered a person who pays poor kids from the poorest countries to post spam, hunt down forms and whatnots...

They do a lot of really stupid and obvious things too. Some of them are so blatant, you wonder why they would actually think you would leave their thread up. I guess they're not thinking like that. Then there's the ones who keep re-registering to post the same spam. Hello?? Did you not notice that we already banned you?

Quote: Then there's the ones who keep re-registering to post the same spam.

Probably a bot.

Bots can get past the captcha and email verification??? At one time we took out the captcha and had problems with a bot, but that was obvious because it posted in the same forum about a million times.

The ones we've been having problems with are coming from a couple of different IP addresses. So they were smart enough to do that, but we had about 6 accounts coming from 3 IP's all posting blatant spam.

Bots easily got past my phpBB2 captcha until I modified it. They can pass email verification as well.

Apparently bots have broken both Hotmail and Yahoo's CAPTCHA's. Although there is speculation that spammers could be using systems like the Amazon Mechanical Turk to pay people to break them, once the human recognition bit is finished the bot takes over.

How's about that for humans and machines working in perfect harmony?

pr0gr4mm3r wrote: Thanks JeevesBond for leaving that up. I've never thought to look for something like that. It's nice to learn from the moderators now and then instead of the thread going *poof*.

Deleting threads is bad, but necessary. You wouldn't believe how much spam the mods/admins delete here (it's mostly Megan, Busy and Matt I think). By the time I spot some spam, they've usually already deleted it: our mods is fast foo!

Usually the spam is a lot easier to spot, less well thought out, that's why I thought this should be left where it is. Although the spammers have been getting cleverer more recently.

Funny, I just happened across this article about 101 ways to build links, including 30 bad ways to build links:

Quote: 76. (on Forums) Ask questions about who provides the best [WIDGET], where [WIDGET] is an item that you sell. From the same IP address create another forum account and answer your own question raving about how great your own site is.

#75 is why we have our signature restriction in. We also see #78. One of the ones he didn't mention is what I call "Article as spam" - write crap article with links to your site and post as new topic on forum without any intention of participating in the forum or starting a discussion.

Megan wrote: One of the ones he didn't mention is what I call "Article as spam" - write crap article with links to your site and post as new topic on forum without any intention of participating in the forum or starting a discussion.

Although it's worth pointing out (in case anyone thinks we're evil and restrictive) that there's a balance we're always try to strike here. If someone asks a question and someone else has written an article that answers the question (particularly if it's well written and informative), then there's nothing wrong with posting a link. We like that and will gladly give you PR: that's what the Internet is all about, right?

Spammers are people who're self-promoting with no interest in helping the community. We like give and take, we want to give good members (everyone in this thread other than the spammer) as many perks as we can because those people are what makes this community good.

Am pleased to see that technique is under the what not to do list. Funny.

On the other hand, it's funny Megan mentioned that "forums may become devalued by SE's", as I have read recently, other webmasters have experienced that forum links and forums itself are starting to be devalued by the Big G. It has caused some concerns to forum owners that they started creating landing pages for their forums... What's your thought on this?

(maybe this deserves another forum topic, feel free to split it, thanks)

drugtestforall wrote: Webvigour RSS Feed Creator is very useful:

Is it? Is it really?! Wow. Fantastic. LOL, some people just don't get it do they.

So as brilliantly demonstrated above: some spammers are clever, whilst others are just stupid.

Quote: Is it? Is it really?! Wow. Fantastic. LOL, some people just don't get it do they.

I doubt Mr. drugtestforall even read the thread.

LMAO. Did that guy not read what we've been talking about here??? Hello!

demonale wrote: On the other hand, it's funny Megan mentioned that "forums may become devalued by SE's", as I have read recently, other webmasters have experienced that forum links and forums itself are starting to be devalued by the Big G. It has caused some concerns to forum owners that they started creating landing pages for their forums... What's your thought on this?

Landing pages -- why? I'm not sure what the rationale would be on that.

I definitely think that signature links are devalued by the SE's. Which is what makes it so annoying when people keep trying the signature spam here. It would be unfortunate if regular links in forums were devalued because many are good edtiorial links. The trouble is separating the spam from the real stuff.

So have you read about people finding that forum pages are being devalued in teh SERP's? That would be unforunate, because often they are a good source of help. I frequently find answers to my searches in forums. And obviously a big problem for us in terms of SEO... I don't think we've noticed a decline in our search traffic lately. Honestly, I don't think Google would be doing itself any favors by completely devaluing forums in the SERP's (links maybe, SERPs no). I wonder if they could somehow learn which forums are allowing more spam and sort it that way....

It seems to be, but I hope not, they started with the sig links, now even Wikipedia is under fire with this it plans to add a no follow to all its links... The landing pages I presume wouldn't do much help either, but some already started doing it. I hope I find a legitimate article source for this to prove if it is really true...