Subset Games Forum

xdiesp wrote:Its just a spambot, dont panic.

Starbug wrote:

xdiesp wrote:Its just a spambot, dont panic.

boa13 wrote:We are not dealing with spam bots, but with spam workers. People whose sole income is being paid to spend their days manually spamming forums. Some barely speak English, others are smarter, they imitate normal forum discussion and include spam links in their signatures. Some work alone from home, others work in teams, with managers and performance objectives. Most post three messages at most, and then go to other forums or create new accounts. A few inundate the forum with 25 messages at once, that was the most recent case.

Spam does not come to forums by chance or by mistake. Spammers monitor Google search results, hot topics in the news, web site rankings, and try to place their links on any site that has a modicum of success. It is no surprise that they arrived in force at the time FTL was released. Their purpose is generally to increase the Google rank of the advertised websites, so it does not matter much if the text is gibberish or if you don't click the link; what matters is that the Google Bot is fooled a little bit, and the advertised website ends up higher in Google Search results.

Unfortunately, as many of you have noted, this forum skin lacks a report button. The best thing you can do when you spot spam is leave it alone (do not reply to it, do not quote it), and see if it goes away by itself (currently the forum is cleaned two to three times per day). In particularly egregious cases, or if you just feel like it, you can also send me a PM with a link to the post itself (right-click on the post title to get the URL) and/or the username of the spammer (which I can use to remove his other posts).