AI spam bots

[jhnmdahl]

We've had a pretty good influx of AI spam bots lately pretending to be normal, engaged members of the forum. They're often not hard to spot, as they use a lot of words but don't offer any real knowledge, and are a little too gung-ho or encouraging.

In response, we've implemented an automatic checker that screens new members and new posts against known spam bot email or IP addresses, and blocks them. If anyone sees something slip through the cracks, or has problems or questions about the new tool, feel free to post here or send a message. Thanks,

John

[AsLan7]

Thanks John.
Keep up the great work.

[Kate]

Thanks, John, for being so diligent.

[CobaltDeadHead]

I've mentioned before that skiing is my greatest passion. I'm a moderator on a skiing forum and it's pretty amazing the amount of these bots. I assume there's a profit motivation. I've always been curious how successful they are at what they try and do.

Especially weird that such low traffic websites like this one and the skiing forum mentioned get hit hard.

[jhnmdahl]

Their general game seems to be making a few generic posts, then trying to sneak a link to an affiliated website into their post. If they can do this a bunch of times, they grow the number of external links to the site that search engines see, which helps improve the site's rankings.

When I started Cobaltchat ten years ago I would occasionally post links back here on other websites for similar reasons, but I would do so in the context of a thread here being able to answer their specific question. The bot links typically have nothing to do with boating or with the topic at hand.