Tip of the Day:

If it looks and smells like a spam post, it probably is.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Is+it+a+good+idea+to+start+the+war+in+Iran%3F%22

Now explain to me what the advantage is to spamming websites? Is it for fun, or is there some purpose?

Acheick wrote:

Now explain to me what the advantage is to spamming websites? Is it for fun, or is there some purpose?

In most cases, the post will contain one or more links to Web sites for gambling, porn or physically enhancing supplements. The purpose of these posts is to get higher search engine rankings for the site they promote.

On other occasions, the spam post will be an innocuous "Hi, I'm new to this site" or topic du jour comments such as the one above. The purpose of such posts, if I'm not mistaken, is to act as a sort of sniffer to see what forums are vunerable and which automated hacking method was successful. These are then followed up on with additional spam posts.

So firstly - they want to bring traffic to a specific site. Second, they want to check on the security vulnerability of a site? Then what? Put adware on there so people posting, etc., will get it on their computers? Just curious, thanks for taking the time.

Acheick wrote:

So firstly - they want to bring traffic to a specific site. Second, they want to check on the security vulnerability of a site? Then what? Put adware on there so people posting, etc., will get it on their computers? Just curious, thanks for taking the time.

No. That wouldn't be possible though posting to a forum. To gain access to the server and prompt site visitors to download spyware they would have to take a different approach.

The main reason they do this is the same reason junk mail (both in paper and email form) exists--they are playing a numbers game. The more people they present the link to, the more chances they have of someone clicking on the link. The more people click on the link, the more chances they have of someone buying what they are trying to sell.