Remember to report spambots

[Jacob__mybb_import1]

If you see a new member write a post that's useless or unrelated to the topic, and their post or signature includes links to another website, it's probably a spambot. Report the posts and I'll delete their accounts.


An easy way to spot whether it's a bot is that almost all bots lately have had signatures that look like this:

product a | product b

Lately, some bots (especially in this thread and this one) have made posts that almost seem on-topic, but they nearly always have this format of signature.

[Duck]

Have there been more recently?

[Jacob__mybb_import1]

Yes.

[Fat_Sacks]

I actually made this announcement a while ago and last week I perma'd a few bots.

[Qwertygiy]

Only you posted it in the Mod section as an announcement to mods. This is a general "Report spambots!" alert, not just a "Delete spambots!" mod alert.

Anyway, yeah, if you take away me, LOL, and Hippo_Yay, we have almost as many spambot posts as legitimate posts.

[Qwertygiy]

I've updated it with a notice about their signature format.

[Hippo]

I keep forgetting to report them. Whenever Who or Tester's thread has a new post, I noticed it's probably a bot rather than a user. And there was the guy bot who made his own thread.

[Qwertygiy]

The ones that make their own threads are obvious, because it's usually about Gucci handbags or hunting boars or the best chocolate for Christmas and the grammar looks like someone shoved it from Dutch into English via Danish through a shabby free online translator.

[Jacob__mybb_import1]

The ones that make their own threads are obvious, because it's usually about Gucci handbags or hunting boars or the best chocolate for Christmas and the grammar looks like someone shoved it from Dutch into English via Danish through a shabby free online translator.

And sometimes they don't even bother, I've seen Chinese and Russian spam before.

Keep an eye on new members too - some spambots are programmed to add advertising links to their signature, but not post anything, to increase the search engine ranking of the sites. The names are often nonsensical or formulaic, like "zifnjcvovp3in" or "johndoe1963."