We’re having another wave of spammers today. They don’t seem to last long. I reported two of them and while I was reporting them, they both got simultaneously reported by other posters - one of them got simultaneously reported three times.
Based on this, it doesn’t appear spam posts have a long life expectancy on this thread. Are there any stats for how long the average spam post lasts on this board before it’s reported?
I’m not aware of any stats. All I know is by the time I see running coach’s post reports, engineer_comp_geek has usually already banned them. And I usually see the reports within minutes.
A lot of spammers get banned even before they have a chance to post. For ones that do post, I think survival time is normally a matter of minutes.
I’m possibly the most predictable mod in terms of when I’m on the Board. I’m on here almost every day beginning at 6:30 or so AM, EDT. I have to get off by 8:30 to get to work. engineer_comp_geek has banned spammer before I get on many times. If he’s not on line that morning, I get to ban 2-6 spammer who have done their work usually between 2-7 AM. So, overnight spam can sometimes remain for hours. I get back on here in the evening between 6-7 PM most days. The daytime spam is usually vanished within minutes, not hours. Evening spam is less as much of India/Bangladesh is asleep.
For some reason known only to themselves, the streaming spammers recently have been making their posts even easier to recognize.
They often try to disguise their spam by copying or partially copying the titles of other threads, or using titles that don’t make much sense. This is pretty ineffectual since they are easy to detect just by scanning down the list of thread titles.
But now they have started “disguising” spam as a different kind of spam. The title advertises smartphones or other products, but the post itself contains streaming links. Why they think we’ll be able to detect ads for phones less quickly I can’t figure out. The would be better off just titling them “Get your streaming links here!”
Maybe the reason for those actions is hidden in the vast spam world of practices, that is, I doubt if spammers tailor their actions so specifically to us or any other site. If a procedure works for many (or they think it will), they apply it to all without discrimination.
I also think the spammers aren’t checking on their work or determining successes as a guide to future action; if they were, they would ignore us as not worth the effort. This appears to be the way telephone scammers work now; In spite of never, ever, making any “sales” from my phone, they just keep calling the same unproductive phone numbers. They have a loss on every call, but they make it up in the volume.