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Superman originaly was to be an Earth Man from the future... lettersofnote.com
Mark Warner:
Just to add a bit of color, I think that one thing a lot of people are not aware of is the spammer is often not directly looking for the links to be clicked. It's cool if they are, but there is a more devious plan in operation.
The idea is I register a domain for just a few bucks ... cram it with ads or phishing stuff. It is a really rubbish site.
I then spam the hell out of every forum. Now the search engines spot the links and say hey DCM is a cool site and they are respectable and they are linking to xyzspam ... so it looks like that is a cool site as well so let's move them up the rankings ... so in the very short term when people do searches for whatever your spam site is trying to promote, you are near the top of the list and get more hits.
BUT VERY soon the search engines realize ... hey the links to this site come from all over the place: a comic site, a caravan site, a pet store etc ... this looks suspicious .... and the spam site gets booted. But meanwhile Mr Spammer has started the process all over again. And the old spam site is worthless so is recycled. Search engines are getting really good at spotting the spam links, plus realizing that it is a low value site. It is a cat and mouse game.
The other effect of this is that these links can theoretically harm DCM's rankings. If they are not removed, or it is a very frequent occurrence, the search engines say hey .... this site has lots of outgoing spammy links which are not good for visitors ... it is a signal of a badly maintained site .. lets's drop them down the rankings a bit.
Anyway I HATE spammers .. they are a massive drain on resources and I'd be in favor of very severe punishments for them. If a kid hacks into the Pentagon (which he should not be able to do) they throw the book at him .. but spammers must cost industry billions!
Anyway rant over, and hopefully that has explained a bit about their modus operandi
Yoc:
Thanks John.
Isn't there also some monetary gain for these jerk spammers as well? Eyeballs on banner ads or something? Otherwise I don't see any gain for all the effort.
John C:
I'm sure there's some, and the return on investment probably isn't terrible, but I'd guess the big money comes from either malware (growing a bigger botnet to sell to the next criminal enterprise) and the sort of domain-based "pump and dump" scam Mark is talking about--I think the part you're missing, Mark, is that you auction the domain off while the page rank is still high.
If you want to really worry over the sorts of things criminals can do...
http://www.futurecrimes.com/
Mark Warner:
Nah ... what I am talking about and what we are dealing with DCM/CB+, they just last a day or so .. a week max ... no one buys them. Google/Bing are very good at spotting them.
Malware sites you would do primarily via email, not by forum spam. Spend you resources pumping the junk out to inboxes ... I'd actually stay well clear of putting links on websites. But, a lot of the spammers are not very bright.
paw broon:
Away from spamers for a moment and a wee bit off-topic, thanks Yoc for the link to Letters of Note - absolutely fascinating. As I live 4 miles from Linlithgow Palace, birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots and as you mentioned her letter on LoN., you might want a look at the Linlithgow Palace website:-
http://www.marie-stuart.co.uk/Castles/Linlithgow.htm
And here's the Mary, Queen of Scots page:-
http://www.marie-stuart.co.uk/index.htm
Not a lot of comics but, historically, very important. Hope some of you have a look and explore a bit more.
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