Commercial Links

[drew]

Hey Guys,

We have been lucky for a while regarding spammers, but we still get them. I just wanted to warn everyone who's not a spammer:

Don't put commercial links in your signature lines or throughout your posts unless it's really obvious that this is a link related to the conversation. Obviously if you're a longtime member, we all know you're not a spammer. But, if you're fairly new and I see a commercial link in your signature line I will delete and ban you and it's not something that can easily be undone (I should know, in trying to remove a spammer earlier this year I accidentally banned myself and deleted like 7 or 8 years worth of pics and posts including all my stories).

I don't want to ban a legit person, so just be careful and leave commercial stuff off your sigs. If you do put a link in your sig make sure it's obvious what it is.

Not being an ass, it just seems to be a necessary part of keeping the spammers off here. In case you haven't noticed, they've gotten smarter and now post slightly related stuff on the boards. I'm not sure the ultimate aim of these guys, but I'd imagine somehow if their profiles get established enough they can do something malicious.

OK, happy muscledom

drew

[Tronald]

Originally Posted by drew

Hey Guys,

We have been lucky for a while regarding spammers, but we still get them. I just wanted to warn everyone who's not a spammer:

Don't put commercial links in your signature lines or throughout your posts unless it's really obvious that this is a link related to the conversation....Not being an ass, it just seems to be a necessary part of keeping the spammers off here. In case you haven't noticed, they've gotten smarter and now post slightly related stuff on the boards. I'm not sure the ultimate aim of these guys, but I'd imagine somehow if their profiles get established enough they can do something malicious.

OK, happy muscledom

drew

This site has a couple of things that paid 3rd world spammers like:
1) Its easy to join and start posting
2) Is fairly tolerant of new and poor-english posts
3) Is fairly popular / reputable / linky

So what happens is that an online retailer (who may be complicit or an innocent victim of a bad SEO practitioner) wants to promote their products, and, say, associate their site in Google with search terms like "Blu ray".

The spammer is hired to post links throughout the internet with "blu ray" in the link text and and link URL pointing to the site being search-optimized.

The more links across the internet that make "blu ray" synonymous with that site, the higher that site ranks when users search.

The poster might get paid 20 us cents per post. Not bad work in some places, but bad for site quality here.

[Tronald]

The spammers are working for "Link Building Services" (reconstruct this URL to understand how profitable such spam is: www blurbpoint com/link-building-services.php). And here's what they do:

1) Create a user id with a search engine optimized link in the signature line.
2) Troll only the publicly-viewable forums on the site (because Google can crawl those)
3) Find a topic that needs a post, and google it.
4) Copy a blurb from elsewhere on the web and paste it as the response.

Example: User "Mario20" (created on Dec 4th) posted 10 posts in quick succession (some just minutes apart) on Dec 8th 2010. While all sounded basically on-topic, they were not "in context". I

Trolling the Diet & Nutrition thread, he found a thread on "Methyl 1-D" (http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=21882) where a real user wrote: "Anyone ever tried it?"

Mario20 googled Methyl 1-D and came up with this post in the Anabolic Minds forum:
http://anabolicminds.com/forum/suppl....html&p=628226 ...that post reads:

Methyl-1-D is just DHEA and ATD. It's not even a Prohormone. The most he'll get out of it is a mild pump and that's about it. Besides blowing bigger loads. It's not Methyl-D, but Methyl 1-D by legal gear. Also I imagine he's not taking real GH but Pills that "boost natural GH production"

He then pasted the exact words here in his response. (see thread, above, if the moderators haven't removed Mario20's response)

Then to "Vitamins", Mario20 googles it, finds this page (http://www.disabled-world.com/medica...ents/vitamins/) and takes the second paragraph:

All natural vitamins are organic food substances found only in living things, that is, plants and animals. With few exceptions, the body cannot manufacture or synthesize vitamins. They must be supplied by the diet or in dietary supplements. Vitamins are essential to the normal functioning of our bodies. They are necessary for growth, vitality, health, general well being, and for the prevention and cure of many health problems and diseases.

Copies it, and pastes it here, in the Vitamins thread (along with the SEO sig line which points to fun/games websites)

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3967

[Aielyn]

Perhaps whoever the main admin for the site is should look into perhaps adding a few anti-spam mods (not moderators, but modifications) to the system.

Actually, looking at the recent history of vBulletin, I'm wondering if maybe it would be better to change to a different Forum system entirely. I moderate a forum that uses IP.Boards (with a number of mods), and it seems to be somewhat better than vBulletin, at least as far as spam is concerned. Could just be appearances, though.