The bad news is... last night it dawned on me that there are more human spammers in our forum than we first thought. They are not spam BOTS, but PEOPLE. So I did some research online very late last night.
Turns out, forum spamming is an extremely effective technique spammers use to get us to
post many times on a thread so it will link to external sites.
This serves two goals:
1. Will increase search engine visibility in highly competitive advertising domains (such as weight loss, pharmaceuticals, gambling, pornography, real estate or loans, etc.)
2. Will generate more traffic for these commercial websites
In other words, the more we respond to their threads, the more money they make.
AND THAT'S ONLY HALF THE BAD NEWS.
The other half is that we have more spammers than we first thought. One resource says they come in and post a friendly newcomer's introduction and then go into some situation where they ask you to explain something (
such as "What Bible is the most reliable?"" or "What should I do in this situation with my new boyfriend?" or "How should I pray for my unsaved spouse?" etc. etc)
The source I read said they all do the same thing: They will thank you profusely for responding and they will ask you for further information so they can get as many people to respond as possible. The more pages, the more money they make. So... I looked through some of the BDF posts to see if I could spot one or two. There were many that fit the description of spammer.
Remember we were wondering why people come in and ask a question or present a serious problem then never return? They don't have to return as long as they have people responding to the thread, their mission is accomplished.