Weird context-generated link spamming comments going around, anyone else been seeing them?

[mr cheese]

I keep seeing these brand new accounts posting these random somewhat-contextually-worded-but-completely-nonsensical replies with links in them formatted the exact same way every time. Looks a little something like this

This doesn't make any kind of sense, and has those hotlinks on the bottom that go to sketchy looking software, potentially harmful software, linked to them every single time. I had another example but reported it and didn't think any more of it. Now it seems there's more accounts doing the same thing. Is this a common thing that's been going around lately?

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, DaJakerBoss said:

I keep seeing these brand new accounts posting these random somewhat-contextually-worded-but-completely-nonsensical replies with links in them formatted the exact same way every time. Looks a little something like this

This doesn't make any kind of sense, and has those hotlinks on the bottom that go to sketchy looking software, potentially harmful software, linked to them every single time. I had another example but reported it and didn't think any more of it. Now it seems there's more accounts doing the same thing. Is this a common thing that's been going around lately?

Seen it plenty times before. They necro some old thread or 10 and then get banned.

[Spotty]

It's spam and unfortunately spam like that is somewhat common. Please use the report function to report them as you did. Reports help a lot.

[mr cheese]

Just now, Spotty said:

It's spam and unfortunately spam like that is somewhat common. Please use the report function to report them as you did. Reports help a lot.

Will do, I've never come across it before but I'll continue to keep reporting it best I can

[Stahlmann]

I've seen these in many different forums in the last few months.

 

Often they're just "Do you still need help with xxx? Click here for Amazon results about xxx!", but like the one you found they can also be used to spread malicious software.

[LogicalDrm]

Welcome to internet? Spam is very common. Most of it is caught by different methods of filtering, but no filter is perfect.

 

You can help by reporting the post/threads. Do not bother replying, the content will be removed anyways.

 

[Beerzerker]

I'm aware of a few places that a topic will be "Auto-Locked" after so much time with no posts to it has passed to help prevent crap like this.
Maybe such an Auto-lock feature for threads would be of use, esp for a forum as large as this one happens to be. 

As to how long it goes before the lock takes place is something you guys would need to figure out.

[Spotty]

17 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

I'm aware of a few places that a topic will be "Auto-Locked" after so much time with no posts to it has passed to help prevent crap like this.
Maybe such an Auto-lock feature for threads would be of use, esp for a forum as large as this one happens to be. 

As to how long it goes before the lock takes place is something you guys would need to figure out.

That wouldn't help that much, and would be somewhat of an inconvenience to genuine forum users. Quite often the threads the spammers post in are just chosen at random. This one was posted in a thread that was created only 3 hours earlier. There are some threads that contain buzz words that the spammers latch on to that will get spam posted to even years later but we normally deal with those when it comes up.

[LogicalDrm]

2 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

I'm aware of a few places that a topic will be "Auto-Locked" after so much time with no posts to it has passed to help prevent crap like this.
Maybe such an Auto-lock feature for threads would be of use, esp for a forum as large as this one happens to be. 

As to how long it goes before the lock takes place is something you guys would need to figure out.

There are methods like this already in place. But as said, no filter is perfect and ours requires some contributing from members. Reporting and labeling reports correctly will help to deal with issues quickly. If post/thread has multiple reports, it will get picked faster.

[mr cheese]

7 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

Welcome to internet? Spam is very common.

I'm not 12, no need to be condescending. I've seen plenty of spam here and been reporting it every time I see it, it's just this specific kind of spam that's new to me on this forum and something I hadn't seen before, which is why I came to ask about it.

10 hours ago, DaJakerBoss said:

Is this a common thing that's been going around lately?

 

Sorry if for some reason this is a bother to you.

 

 

[LogicalDrm]

37 minutes ago, DaJakerBoss said:

I'm not 12, no need to be condescending. I've seen plenty of spam here and been reporting it every time I see it, it's just this specific kind of spam that's new to me on this forum and something I hadn't seen before, which is why I came to ask about it.

 

Sorry if for some reason this is a bother to you.

 

 

Sorry if you took it that way. Guess I'm too used and cynical that any link posted is possible spam. The type here is really common.

[Spotty]

5 hours ago, DaJakerBoss said:

it's just this specific kind of spam that's new to me on this forum and something I hadn't seen before, which is why I came to ask about it.

If you are ever in doubt but suspect it might be spam, report it anyway. Feel free to include a note in the report "not sure but might be spam" or something. We can always take a look at it and if it turns out it's not spam we can just close the report.

 

5 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

Sorry if you took it that way. Guess I'm too used and cynical that any link posted is possible spam. The type here is really common.

It's probably only common to you because you're a moderator and are often dealing with this type of spam. If people aren't familiar with it and are surprised seeing spam on the forum I take that as a huge compliment. It means we're doing our jobs properly.