Why do forums get spambots?

[Bryn]

It seems that everywhere I go, there's always a bunch of spambots that sign up on forums and spread their filth all around, giving the administration a hard time to stamp them all out and making their places more secure but even at that, they can still find a way over them and that isn't right. I do want to ask though... why do they get spambots in the first place? Is it because of the domain name? The host they're with? Or even search crawlers that silently bring them in? I guess that if you push your forum/site to the top, it will attract more of them and when I knew of this, I'm careful of how popular my own place should be through my own advertising/promotion methods, even though I have admin approval on to make them stop dead at their tracks but still, they're nothing but an inconvenience to everyone in the community, especially me... where I'm beginning to enjoy forums less over the past couple of years, especially in one other forum I'm on, there's only like one decent new member in between suspicious-looking spam accounts, and it's a real shame.

 

[Deleted member 44219]

Large forums will most likely have spam bots. They are common, even in social media such as Facebook and Twitter. It is most likely done by a skilled programmer who writes code and tells the bot what to say. Other people with no skill in programming will download something from the internet that will then be injected into the forum and then boom! Spam created.

Hopefully this cleared things up a tiny bit. 🙂

 

[Bryn]

Yeah, I did know that larger forums are more prone to this 🙁

 

[Deleted member 44219]

Yeah, I did know that larger forums are more prone to this 🙁

Good that you know. But there may be more ways that spam bots can get onto large sites. Despite large sites being vulnerable, smallers sites are less likely targeted but are very prone to spam bots.

 

[Joshua Farrell]

It tends to happen. The longer the forum has been around, the more spam bots tend to hit it, as activity or forum size doesn't matter. This also happens with blogs.

 

[Page]

This is always on going and never can be stopped, been going on for years and if not life for other's. I seen it happen to small and big sites but mostly since they been running for years. My site been running for 3 years now and never had one spambot! why? As I run IPB that has spam defense service built into the software and to mention it's paid.

CAn't stop it fully but can stop it happening before it get to your joinup page

 

[Azareal]

They need somewhere to sell their viagra.

 

[Bryn]

smallers sites are less likely targeted but are very prone to spam bots.

Also to mention forums that are long abandoned too, but are still left online anyhow. I knew of one forum that was only around for a few months until one day, when everyone left it behind, a whole army of spambots came in. That was back in 2009 by the way.

My site been running for 3 years now and never had one spambot!

I had mine for four, and I was on a free host 😛

Although having said that, I've never seen any spambots attacking any ProBoards forum. I guess ProBoards has the highest level of protection against them?

 

[Page]

Although having said that, I've never seen any spambots attacking any ProBoards forum. I guess ProBoards has the highest level of protection against them?

Yeah it seems like they have or unless you have some kind of firewall. End of the day an site has to stop them joining (if they are bots). Humans well, they get in still.

 

[Deleted member 44219]

smallers sites are less likely targeted but are very prone to spam bots.

Also to mention forums that are long abandoned too, but are still left online anyhow. I knew of one forum that was only around for a few months until one day, when everyone left it behind, a whole army of spambots came in. That was back in 2009 by the way.

My site been running for 3 years now and never had one spambot!

I had mine for four, and I was on a free host 😛

Although having said that, I've never seen any spambots attacking any ProBoards forum. I guess ProBoards has the highest level of protection against them?

Yeah, a lot of forums are abandoned by their owners. Some reasons for abandoning them could include:

• Lack of motivation
• Boredom
• Stress
• No one is joining
• The owner might be dead
• It's passed onto someone else but they end up quitting the forum
• They find a better forum host and make a new forum using that host

Those are some reasons old forums could be abandoned.

Just because your site has been around for a few years and hasn't ever had spambots, that doesn't mean your forum host is secure. There are thousands of ways to bypass security even on forums that use a secure host. But I've only tried ProBoards but didn't like it. I use CreateAForum which my current forum, Hobbyist is running on.

 

[Azareal]

Spambots will go after you, even if you don't have any presence.
What you see is only scratching the surface. The *failed* attempts are legion.

Even if you think your cruddy software doesn't have any "spam protection", ahaha.
I remember when MyBB put up some secret demo for some in-development version and the spambots somehow found it and made a post once every thirty seconds.

And they were all, all, trying to sell viagra.
It was like the gates of the hell opened and all the little demons came pouring out.

 

[Deleted member 44219]

Spambots will go after you, even if you don't have any presence.
What you see is only scratching the surface. The *failed* attempts are legion.

Even if you think your cruddy software doesn't have any "spam protection", ahaha.
I remember when MyBB put up some secret demo for some in-development version and the spambots somehow found it and made a post once every thirty seconds.

And they were all, all, trying to sell viagra.
It was like the gates of the hell opened and all the little demons came pouring out.

I wonder why the bots were trying to sell Viagra?