The smily scam

[mrsir2009]

Hey, this might be a bit of an odd question, but...

Is anyone familiar with that scammy thing going on in forums (including MacRumors) where people paste in external smilies and it somehow gets them traffic to their website or something along those lines?

If so, how exactly does pasting in external smilies get them traffic to their site? I'm confused?

 

[r.j.s]

Every time someone views the thread it loads the image from their site, which is where the traffic comes from.

I don't know exactly how that helps the site owner.

BTW, if you see any of this smilies, report (

) the post.

 

[appleguy123]

So we can't use clever smileys we find online anymore?

 

[r.j.s]

So we can't use clever smileys we find online anymore?

No, that's not the problem; there are people out there that will include a smilie from an external site in every post ... often their posts are just enough on-topic to sneak by most people.

 

[mrsir2009]

Every time someone views the thread it loads the image from their site, which is where the traffic comes from.

I don't know exactly how that helps the site owner.

BTW, if you see any of this smilies, report (Image) the post.

I think they could use it with publishing sites like Triond who pay per view... So every time someone views the MacRumors page it counts as a view on Triond, and they get $$$. Not sure if that'd work or thats how they do it... Just an idea.

Thanks for clearing that up!

----------

No, that's not the problem; there are people out there that will include a smilie from an external site in every post ... often their posts are just enough on-topic to sneak by most people.

I see them a lot in the sticky megathreads that gets tons of traffic.

 

[appleguy123]

I think they could use it with publishing sites like Triond who pay per view... So every time someone views the MacRumors page it counts as a view on Triond, and they get $$$. Not sure if that'd work or thats how they do it... Just an idea.

Thanks for clearing that up!

Do they pay per view, or per ad impression?

 

[mcdj]

As if the gif spam wasn't enough, the people that use them here all seem to be either non-English speaking at best (and by many of their screen names, I suspect Chinese) or jibberish spewing spam bots.

And now, they've upped the ante by replacing the smilie gifs with 1x1 invisible bug gifs.

So if you see someone post utter nonsense that has little if anything to do with the topic, or seems like a totally generic canned reply, click quote and check their post...chances are you will see a hidden URL or IMG tag for some crappy site.

I can just picture roomfulls of these people, getting paid to create profiles and posting this crap, by the thousands, on forums all across the web. If they keep it up, hopefully the advertisers will get wise and change the traffic detection method.

 

[mrsir2009]

As if the gif spam wasn't enough, the people that use them here all seem to be either non-English speaking at best (and by many of their screen names, I suspect Chinese) or jibberish spewing spam bots.

And now, they've upped the ante by replacing the smilie gifs with 1x1 invisible bug gifs.

So if you see someone post utter nonsense that has little if anything to do with the topic, or seems like a totally generic canned reply, click quote and check their post...chances are you will see a hidden URL or IMG tag for some crappy site.

I can just picture roomfulls of these people, getting paid to create profiles and posting this crap, by the thousands, on forums all across the web. If they keep it up, hopefully the advertisers will get wise and change the traffic detection method.

If enough people do it they'll wise up to it, and so will forums.

 

[mcdj]

If enough people do it they'll wise up to it, and so will forums.

Macrumors knows all about it...the problem is keeping up with the spammers. They use different URLs every day. The only way to kill it is to disallow URLs in posts. Don't see that happening. I could be wrong.

 

[boss.king]

For clarification, are these those things where I hit reply and see a gif linked to a website, even though it doesn't show up in the message?

I used to report those but I stopped because no one ever did anything about them.

 

[robbieduncan]

For clarification, are these those things where I hit reply and see a gif linked to a website, even though it doesn't show up in the message?

I used to report those but I stopped because no one ever did anything about them.

Yes. Please report them. We will definitely do something about them. I banned 10-15 newbies yesterday alone for this (and deleted all their posts)

 

[mrsir2009]

Yes. Please report them. We will definitely do something about them. I banned 10-15 newbies yesterday alone for this (and deleted all their posts)

Wow... Looks like some sort of automatic system is needed

 

[Demosthenes X]

Another forum I frequent doesn't allow posting urls until you've reached 10 or 20 posts. I wonder if something similar would help here...

 

[mrsir2009]

Another forum I frequent doesn't allow posting urls until you've reached 10 or 20 posts. I wonder if something similar would help here...

It may get worse... Because you'll get 10 or 20 really rubbish posts before the smily scam commences. Or they might move on to a different forum. Hard to tell which would happen.