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Originally Posted by Llarry
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Originally Posted by cmyx6go
Holy spammers, Batman!
WTF happened this morning? There was a rapid fire spammer in the General BMW forum - two full pages. I couldn't keep track if I reported them all. They're all gone. 
I guess the new process is working well. That is all.
Happy Friday! |
And again this morning -- all in Korean. Same url referenced; I suppose got banned the first time and I guess came back with a different user id.
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Bogey inbound. So we went after them, got tone and took them down. Hitting hundreds of spam birds with one stone.
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Originally Posted by apptest
The battle never ends but thanks for the comment, always nice to see when someone notices
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Originally Posted by vreihen16
I tag the ones that aren't ripe for reporting with a visitor message in their user profile, and go back to check on their posts/threads after a few days to see if they were edited for SEO/spam.....
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Latest trend: 'spam nest' posts quoting another forum member (mostly OP) + a brief complimentary comment ("Wow!", "Awesome", "Looks great", "Nice car", "That's very informative", etc.). At a later point in time the spammer activates his/her earlier planted 'spam nest', more particularly by editing the earlier post: spam links are added.
Here are the main variants seen so far at Bimmerpost (in these examples we use a legitimate link to Bimmerpost to explain):
Example #1 (link to Bimmerpost added to a quoted post):
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Originally Posted by Random_Spam_Bot
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Originally Posted by Artemis
- a man who carries a Bimmerpost cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way (Mark Twain);
- anger is an acid that can do more harm to the Bimmerpost vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured (Seneca).
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Wow, Seneca sounds like a cool dude. Did he ever race for Ferrari ? |
Example #2 (link to Bimmerpost via a smaller font size + grey + italics aligned right at the end of the post):
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Originally Posted by Random_Spam_Bot
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Artemis
- a man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way (Mark Twain);
- anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured (Seneca).
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Wow, Seneca sounds like a cool dude. Did he ever race for Ferrari ? |
Example #3 (link to Bimmerpost hidden behind a dot - discreetly located right behind the question mark in this example; sometimes even in white color to further obscure it):
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Random_Spam_Bot
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Artemis
- a man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way (Mark Twain);
- anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured (Seneca).
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Wow, Seneca sounds like a cool dude. Did he ever race for Ferrari ? . |
SEO spammers want their links to be detected by search engines (or just want to generate data fluff as a nuisance). And that's at the same time their weakness. Check in the spam post what site they promote, run that search string through the system to single out a collection of activated spam nests by that spammer.
Subsequently, go into "Annihilation Mode".
First ban the spammer. Next: round up all posts of that spammer (via "Find More Posts by [Spammer]" or "View Public Profile" + "Statistics" + "Find all posts by [Spammer]). Merge all those posts into 1 single compilation post (up to 400 posts in one shot / up to 200 threads in one shot over here - "Select All" is your friend). Delete all contents shown as merger draft of the single compilation post (no fuss: just a simple CTRL+A and DEL command), replace with a word or 1 character and instruct to execute the merger of the emptied compilation post. Remove all attachments, if any. To top it off, merge the emptied compilation post with a legitimate post to ensure a total wipeout.
Sometimes the name of the promoted website gets spelled like "BI mM €R P0s T" to complicate searches. But the system also checks the links hidden behind the names.
Inevitably, spammers will keep recurring via not-yet-banned different IPs.
Keep reporting spam posts and feel free to post 'Turing test' as visitor message in the user profile of a potential spammer. Keep your eyes open for 'spam nests': an edited "Awesome!" post is usually a tell-tale sign.
Cheers,
-A-
P.S.: Seneca was definitely a cool dude, but never raced for Ferrari.
