Forum Spamming

As one of the Admins for the site, I get to see more than most. One such area is the SPAM messages that do not get published because our SPAM filters have already syphoned it off. There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of it across the net, of this particular BRAND of SPAM that is.

Now most forums (including this one) require non-registered users to type in matching text from an obscure image in order to maintain a level of security. The fact that these posts are not being blocked at this point would indicate that there are some very "busy" people out there whose sole purpose in life is to simply post Spam Comments onto any and every forum they can find.

They follow an interesting format...

<Salutation>. <Random Quote> Help me! <Something about finding sites>. I can only find <some obscure Hyperlinked text which has absolutely no relevance at all to the main topic at hand> <followed by either really badly written english or random words that give the appearance of a sentence or four>.

I did a Google search on the two Bold Phrases above and was so TOTALLY STUNNED at how much of this stuff is out there. I found Blog Posts with hundreds of these SPAM comments, and these sites used the same IMAGE MATCH Security I mentioned before!

At first the Random Quote seemed obscure enough until I started recognising them. They had better english structure than the rest of the comment and had a ring of truth around most of them. So I started Googling some of them. Here are a sample of what I found...

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." - Mahatma Gandhi

This is the Best "Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted." - Hesketh Pearson

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." - G B Shaw

"Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again." - Og Mandino

"Make a decision, even if it's wrong." - Jarvis Klem

"We inherit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted... Each of us contains within... this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise." - Edward Sellner

"Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person." - Mark Twain

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." - Bertrand Russell

In other words, the only really useful thing these SPAM posts offer is some random and occasional meaningful quotation that some famous ... or semi-famous person ... once said. I have never tried to access one of the links although they all APPEAR to be different sites each time. I don't intend to either.

Anyway, just some idle thoughts to pass the time away...