Spambots What are they? What do they do? How to handle them? What is a Spambot? A Spambot is an automated computer program which assists the sending of spam. The program creates fake accounts that send spam. They surf through the web and try to find sites that do not use any sort of verification, such as CAPTCHAs. But the OCR (Optical-character-recognition) technology can even bypass CAPTCHAs. Some spam messages are targeted towards readers and can involve techniques of target marketing or phishing, which makes it hard to tell real posts from the bot generated ones. What do they do? 1. Spambots create fake accounts. 2. They route to a forum site and create a new thread. 3. The threads contain links to malicious sites. Other Facts 1. Most fake accounts are shown as female and the shown age differs from 20 - 40. They do not have a profile picture. 2. Spambots also sometimes link the homepage on their profile. 3. Spambots sometimes make multiple threads. 4. Spambots most likely are "advertising" Skin Care products. How to handle Spambots For threads 1. If you see the thread open it. 2. Scroll down to the end of the thread. 3. Click on "Report". 4. Give a report reason such as "Spambot" so the Staff can easily delete the thread. 5. Click "Report Post". For profiles with website links (Homepages) 1. Post a message on the profile. Such as "." 2. Report your own post with the reason "Spambot profile". EDIT: You can now report profiles directly! For Status 1. Report the Status as shown under "Threads". Now you know everything about spambots~
