So many spammers trying to join AGO every day...

[Mike Phillips]

So many spammers trying to join AGO every day...


Each morning and on the fly throughout each day I go through and approve or remove pending new accounts.

What you don't see behind the scenes is how many spammers try to join this forum every day. For the life of me I have know idea why? For the most part, the people on this forum are way to smart to actually take the bait and try to purchase anything posted by a spammer. And most of us are too smart to click on any links they share.


We have a vBulletin plug-in that helps to reduce spammers from actually registering but somehow they get through it and then each day I have the joy of running their e-mail address and IP address through Google and then when it comes back negative I have the pleasure of turning their info over to the StopForumSpam.com database.


I guess some people never figure out the right way to get through life is with an actual job?

[Desertnate]

It might not be individuals actively making the choice.

I can't see the source IP's like you do, but it wouldn't surprise me if they are the equivelent to the troll farms in certain countries which do nothing but create accounts and generate fictitous and inflamitory "news" stories on social media every day on behalf of a paying client. I could see the same approach taken to targeted marketing on forums. Someone with a buisness of questionably legal origin and semi- legitmate product paying another company who then hires people with with the desired language ability to do nothing but look up forums and sub-forums to post their client's content.

The human piece of this puzzle allows them to deliver content past the typical defences set up to block the more traditional "bot" defences.