Spam Glorious Spam

[Soviet Heavy]

For god's sakes, I thought that these captcha's were supposed to stop the spammers from getting through, yet the damn football adbots are coming in every single day.

Can you get rid of them?

 

[Qitz]

reCaptcha only stops spam bots, it doesn't do anything to stop people who are paid to spam shit.

Only thing you can do is report them and move on.

 

[Yureina]

People who are dedicated towards doing something can succeed regardless of obstacles. The same rule applies to adbots and spammers.

 

[Athol]

I'm so soory, I couldn't resist

 

[Soviet Heavy]

reCaptcha only stops spam bots, it doesn't do anything to stop people who are paid to spam shit.

Only thing you can do is report them and move on.

...People get paid to go on websites and enter captchas?

Where do I sign?

China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan or North Korea are good places to start looking.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Somehow I fine the idea of some Indonesian kid getting paid to enter captchas on this very site extremely amusing. Not because the poor buggers get forced into it through extreme poverty, but more because... Well, how much money can you make spreading malware? Unless you get lucky, its unlikely some chum on the Escapist is wealthy, uses online banking, and is stupid enough to download and execute a file under the pretense of getting to watch a soccer match.

(Also, North Koreans have access to the internet? Extremely poor North Koreans can afford to pay to get into the one internet cafe in the country? I learn more every day.)

They don't need to get lucky very often, and, well, there's still a lot of naive people in the world.

And North Korea was definitely a surprise to see, though not as much that it's spammers coming from there. Had a similar reaction when I saw IPs from Nepal a few years back.

Anyways, the captchas are properly slowing these guys down so we can study the attack, respond, and clean things up before they cause a giant mess. Think of it like ball bearings on the floor of a fortified house during a zombie apocalypse - yeah, a bit inconvenient, but if zombies make it past a barricade, it can buy you time to patch things up while they flail about.

 

[evilneko]

I'm so soory, I couldn't resist

I find the idea of Japanese people watching subtitled Monty Python amusing for some reason.

Somehow I fine the idea of some Indonesian kid getting paid to enter captchas on this very site extremely amusing. Not because the poor buggers get forced into it through extreme poverty, but more because... Well, how much money can you make spreading malware? Unless you get lucky, its unlikely some chum on the Escapist is wealthy, uses online banking, and is stupid enough to download and execute a file under the pretense of getting to watch a soccer match.

(Also, North Koreans have access to the internet? Extremely poor North Koreans can afford to pay to get into the one internet cafe in the country? I learn more every day.)

The scumbuckets who distribute this crap are often paid by the install, particularly in the case of adware. Actually, that's pretty much how the whole explosion of crapware got started. And in the case of malware that adds a computer to a botnet, well, each new host makes the botnet and its services more valuable... it doesn't really matter how much money the victim has.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Sorry, I failed to notice you are part of the staff - are you saying some of these spam messages are posted from North Korea? Weird. I must be ill informed, I always thought North Korea had like one internet cafe and a few slow connections in expensive hotels, with the general population completely shut out from it.

Specifically from IP addresses assigned to North Korea. I'm not all that familiar with their infrastructure, but I do believe they have network links set up through China and South Korea. There may be little in the way of public internet access, but I suspect various government agencies have access. Either someone in the government is trying to make a little money (officially or otherwise), or some company in China is buying/borrowing their neighbor's network to avoid the #1 spam reduction tactic of all sites: block China.