They just don't quit

Me, seeing a spambot that was banned over eight years ago log on and try to do stuff this morning:

what exactly do they try to do?

Post nonsense. Post nonsense with a link. Post nonsense with a link in the signature.

It varies based on how "smart" they are and how the various security measures hold up. The overwhelming majority of the time they don't manage to do anything significant. The most common use case is that they manage to sign up and put some spammy link in their profile "About" section and that's it.

But your meme says the spambots are the good guys?!

darth yoda?

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"My Dionne Warwick understanding of your dream indicates that you are ambivalent on how you want life to eventually screw you." - Joel

"Ever try to forcibly pin down a house cat? It's not easy." - Captain Steel

"I just can't get pass sticking a finger up a dog's butt." - John Dumbear

what's the point, i wonder.

Of posting links? To drive traffic to them and/or improve search engine ranking.

You know, for a site that's all about the exchange of ideas, I think we the users should get to decide if we want that sweet, sweet discount prescription medication.

Playing devil's advocate?

I forgot to respond to this weeks ago, but this reminds me: most spam makes sense in that it's scammy or for things like drugs or gambling or whatever. High-margin and/or suspect things. But I kid you not, we once got spam for used books. I'm like, I don't care how many people this reaches, there's no way spam for that particular product is going to be economically effective.

I am a thousand times more likely to be lured in by used books than by off-brand viagra or whatever.

In a past life I managed the corporate website for a few tech companies. Actual bots that did the same type of crap over and over again were not the main problem. There were actually real humans behind some of the link-dropping, and thus it was hard to automate against them because the pattern of misbehavior was harder to catch. The really puzzling thing, though, was real humans had no reason to try those forms because they obviously didn't lead through to an open support form or other outlet where they could get visibility. I began to develop this theory that it was scammers ripping off spammers. The spammers had the resources and ran the infrastructure to capture the fools who actually clicked that stuff. But they might be outsourcing the link-dropping to underpaid individuals. So those link-droppers just blast everything they can find, whether it has any chance of being successful or not, because somehow they can rip off the scammers by falsely inflating their spamming volumes. I'm not sure that's a plausible explanation, but it certainly could possibly make a kind of sense and it gave me a grin or two to believe the scammers were also getting scammed. And then there were the jokesters who simply posted profanity.

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Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain ... only straw. Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain? Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they? Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.