There are a lot of tools or basic things people do to get people to fall for scams or advertise random stuff. There are both considered "Spam bots", spam meaning Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages, and bots meaning basically automatic or non-human. Here are the two main spam-bot types. Spam-bots on the Servers The spam bots you see advertise a product to a website in the chat, ask for your username and password, and promise something like a free optifine cape (since they are like $30 USD), and just take your account. They require a good knowledge of programming, and are rare, like less than one a month, but when they attack, they attack strong. The way they work is one account (normally stolen, since they will be banned for advertising), say something like "Free Optifine cape: http://www.1234notarealwebsite.com", then someone sees that and goes to it, sees you need to give a username and password, enters the info, and the program logs into that person's account automatically (kinda like a Minechat system), says the same thing, someone else falls for it, and so on. About 30 people get banned in the end, and that person gets 30 free accounts (unknown if they password gets changed). Another type (pointed out by AmaingGraceGirl) is ones that advertise other servers. They can be 3-5 people at once, and advertise at fast speeds, normally paid. Don't believe me? People are advertising the heck out of Skywars, and some on .org. Spam-bots on the Forums Spam bots on the forums attack (normally with no one knowing) EVERY DAY (at least 6-8 times a day, since it is free advertising), and advertise a random product or service. They are more tricky to spot, and because of that, a guide might be needed. Spotting them with posts: If they have a post (Profile post, post, or thread, or anything with a report button), they will be hard to tell by reading the whole post, but the end is easy to tell. If the title starts like "Last summer, I was remodeling my house..." or "Diets are hard and expensive, but this may solve those problems...", then investigate the thread. If the thread is paragraphed based with NO sorting, and has like "Last summer, I was remodeling my house in the hot weather and I read about [Product], and it works.", with at the bottom it says like (this links to Skyblock.net) Want to try (Product name)? Read this first...... but when it comes to profile posts, they are in most cases just a link... or like say "It improves your swimming ability!" and that means that you should investigate their profile description or home page. These, hit "report" then put where they are advertising. Spotting them without posts: These ones you need to post on mods profile, or contact them somehow, to report them, when like their advertising is like just as an advertisement as their home page. They are more common, and can spend 2 hours without getting caught (then I report them if I see them ). Generic ways of spotting them: There are some basic ways to see if they are a spam bot. Some ways include: Does their name have two parts, did they join within the last 2 hours, are they viewing their profile, forum index, or introductions, is their age +22. A few can help see if they are a spam-bot account. If you see a profile image, then there is less than 1% chance they are a spam bot. Why they can't be IP-banned At this point in time, an IP-ban may do nothing. There are systems to disguise your IP (Dynamic IP, most huge businesses use them to prevent DDoSing) or change it, because there are many possible ways to change one's IP (ways I am unsure, but there are ways). Want to investigate the site? Get Norton Family: When one hears Norton, they may think "Money Hole" or "Bad Security", but I am not talking about paid subscriptions or security software. Norton Family is a useful system that blocks websites that would be inappropriate (such as drug advertising, adult content (Reddit counts, you would need to add it to the whitelist), and pornography). Yes, it may be hard to believe, but someone was advertising a "Nude Web Camera" service, and Norton blocked it. Remember one thing, it is free, it can be done on like +20 devices per account, and there is no paid things. When do they normally make accounts: Their normal times of advertising vary among their product. By the attack times, they are probably European and American. They are normally start at 5:00 AM and end at 8:00 AM EST, and sometimes at 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM EST, and 12:00 AM (Midnight) to 1:30 AM. This is mostly just an awareness thread for the spam-bots, so you do not get trapped. I report a lot to people like Larrythebird101 behind the scenes (private conversation), but just do not use an product or service they advertise (especially if it ends in a uncommon URL end, oh say 12345Notarealsite.pk) even if it is like "Make money online". I mostly made the thread so other mods know (some were clueless about this when I talked to them about this) and so others know because most appear when I am asleep, and some stay up with no one knowing they are spam-bots.
Also on servers they have spam-bots they will advertize in global chat over and over..and the server owners will pay $50 to a company to do it... It happened on .Org when I was a t-nud.. 2* bots spaming inhuman speeds xD
Heh. I have seen a few of those on forums, I have 2 pics of them, one the title, other the whole thread, the Mods did great job though, deleted the thread within 10 mins before I could tag one. Will post the pics in the morning when I'm on the computer.
An automatically generated entity that "crawls" pages to either collect data, moderate (for spam or profanity), or advertises a product. Here's an example About Google's regular crawling of the web - Webmaster Tools Help
Well (this is kinda a bump seeing it has been 11 days since the last post), Imandrewj has requested that we only hit the report button. But one will still need to contact a mod if they are using their profile blurb or home page. (Support a profile report button here.)
That's not fair. What if you were a normal person, and you were banned for being a spam bot? That violates server policy and human rights.
The report button doesn't ban them .-. It brings attention to the user. This, the mods would investigate.
Read the thread. Also, we don't just ban them right away. Like I said, we investigate. However, on threads it's quite clear of advertising, thus we don't really need to investigate. Some spam bots post things on their walls (advertisements).
Oh spam bots. How annoying they are .-. Also FromLegoUniverse I didn't know AmaingGraceGirl was a person on the forums
