Messages From Spammers Pt 3

By Shamus Posted Sunday Feb 12, 2017

Filed under: Random 73 comments

I’ve tried embarrassing the spammers by criticizing their work. I’ve tried offering constructive criticism. And yet they just keep sending the same broken pointless messages. It’s so strange. It’s almost as if they don’t actually read my site.

Well, let’s try again:

seo:
Whats up are using WordPress for your site platform?
I'm new to the blog world but I'm trying to get started and create my own. Do you require any html coding expertise to make your own blog?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Seeing as how you’re trying to sell Search Engine Optimization, I don’t know if you should be telling everyone you’re currently baffled by HTML and blogs.

Dragon city guide
Magnificent goods from you, man. I've understand your stuff previous to and
you are just extremely excellent. I really like what
you've acquired here, really like what you're stating and the
way in which you say it. You make it entertaining and you
still take care of to keep it wise. I can not wait to read much more from you.

This is actually a terrific site.

I really want to visit Dragon City. I want to stand on the ancient Drake’s Head Bridge and watch the dragons circle overhead. I want to climb the steps to the Dracul Gardens overlooking the city, and then stop by Serpent Street for some dragon fin soup. I want to visit the Wyrm District and see the mighty Dragon Temples, tended by the grey-haired dragon priests. My kids could go dancing at Club Trogdor. (The Dragon City council has been trying to shut that place down for years because it’s a bit garish and conflicts with the architecture and traditionalist sensibilities of the city, but it’s hugely popular with millennials.)

But I can’t do these things, because despite spammer’s claims to the contrary, the city does not exist.

Curse you, spam from the mythical Dragon City! Stop tantalizing me with your offers of tourist guides.

English Booster Online:
Wow, that's a really good article.

Wow, that’s a really good spam.

(Or was, until I deleted it.)

best car vacuum:
Fine way of telling, and nice paragraph to take facts about my presentation topic,
which i am going to deliver in academy.

I’m really sad that I wasn’t present for your academic presentation on best car vacuum. I’m really curious how my D&D notes were integrated into the talk.

Namestaj:
Magnificent beat ! I wish to apprentice while you amend your web site,
how can i subscribe for a blog web site? The account helped me a acceptable deal.
I had been tiny bit acquainted of this your broadcast provided bright clear
concept

I have no idea why spam bots are always referring to a post as a “beat”. This has been going on for almost a decade now. Great beat! Wonderful beat! Outstanding beat! Insightful beat!

What is with that? No human does this. How can you be so wrong for so long? I know the goal is to use unusual phrases that won’t trigger spam heuristics, but in this case we have a glaring spam-only phrase that’s been in use for years. That’s the opposite of what you want.

Maybe I shouldn’t be mad at spammers. Maybe I should be mad at spam filters. Why haven’t the filters picked up on this behavior yet?

The next bit of spam was left on a Spoiler Warning episode of KOTOR from October 2015. Here is the text portion of that post, in full:

“So now Carth is wearing assless chaps and an Oculus Rift on his face. So is this the work of developers who wanted to grief the player with clown gear, or are we all victims or artists with no taste? Also, what BioWare game has the stupidest outfits? My money is on this one, but you could make the case that Jack and Samara could take the gold medal away from Carth's chaps in the No-Dignity Olympics.”

And here is what the spammer said in the comments:

automated SEO:
I do trust all of the ideas you've offered on your post.
They are very convincing and will definitely work. Nonetheless, the posts are
very brief for beginners. Could you please lengthen them a bit from subsequent time?
Thank you for the post.

I’m very worried this spambot is out there right now, shopping for assless chaps and an Oculus Rift.

In any case, I’d think that the first step in selling SEO services ought to be demonstrating you have some grasp of how search engines work. Leaving SEO advertisements on an old KOTOR post is not going to impress the Google bots.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for playing.

 


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73 thoughts on “Messages From Spammers Pt 3

  1. Da Mage says:

    Wait…the first one. From sentence to sentence it goes from wanting help with a blog to offering help with a blog….it’s like two messages crushed together.

    1. Demo says:

      It can be parsed to make sense if the ‘you’ in the second paragraph is the hypothetical you, so that it essentially reads “I'm new to the blog world but I'm trying to get started and create my own. Does one require any html coding expertise to make one’s own blog?”. This just doesn’t come naturally because the ‘you’ in the first paragraph does refer to Shamus.

  2. Jokerman says:

    First post! on a magnificent beat!

    1. Jokerman says:

      Nooooo 2nd post… damn it…

      1. Yerushalmi says:

        You could say that the first poster… had you beat.

        1. Armagrodden says:

          YEEEEEAAAAAAAH!!!!! /2003

          1. 4ier says:

            /2003

            !!!
            We forgot to close the {2003} tag! THAT’S why it seems like ‘a few years ago’ instead of over a decade!

    2. Syal says:

      Wanted to post an image here, but my lack of Internetting is finally coming back to bite me.

      …Magnificent Mechanical Bubble Bird.

  3. Sleeping Dragon says:

    The next time I am running an RPG in some kind of fantasy setting I am soooo making a bunch of NPCs who claim to be ambassadors from some “Dragon City” and who are talking in like very interesting contacts for trade and interests… and who are a bunch of complete frauds.

    1. Piflik says:

      Maybe the Dragon City Guide is not a guide to the Dragon City, but a Dragon that has the profession of City Guide…might explain why Shamus can’t find the Dragon City.

      1. Mousazz says:

        It could also be a dragon with the name City Guide.

        “Erm, mister City, I see here you have experience in-”
        “Oh no, please ser, call me Guide. I’m uncomfortable with my first name.”
        ” Ooo-kay. I see you have experience in… package delivery?”
        “Sure thing. I can fly to any place, no matter how remote, in record time!”
        “You’re hired.”

  4. Content Consumer says:

    Wow, that's a really good article.

    Be fair, now. That’s at least grammatically correct and has no spelling errors.

    I don’t know what English Booster is, but it sounds like something this particular spammer has taken or done.

    1. Dragmire says:

      English Boosters are performance enhancing drugs for bots!

      Test your bot today to ensure that they are clean!

      1. Content Consumer says:

        Hang on… isn’t an English Booster just a cup of tea?

    2. Tyber says:

      Maybe spammers get their English vocabulary from randomised booster packs. This is basically saying “look, my booster backs drop whole grammatically correct sentences!”.

    3. Sunshine says:

      That’s what I thought, “At least that one was a coherent sentence.”

  5. MichaelG says:

    You should answer them and let us know what happens. As in this one:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4Uc-cztsJo

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      This,and his safemart video got me thinking:
      Shamus,have you tried going to the websites linked by these spammers and making a spambot of your own that would flood their contacts?Might lead to an interesting bit of exchange.

      1. This guy is awesome. He needs to do more spam investigation in foreign languages now.

        There’s a blog that’s flooded with 42,000 spam comments in, like, Mandarin. Translated, they all say something along the lines of “buy my libido”.

        1. Sunshine says:

          I don’t want it any more, it’s just a nuisance.

          1. FelBlood says:

            Well, It’s not like I have any use for mine after what happened last Valentine’s Day.

      2. Oh shit, I have something to add to this idea! What if Shamus made a spam bot that says lines from Oblivion guards? It’d be funny to see things like “Stop! Thief!” or “You’re not breaking the law on my watch!”

        It would be the protagonist of spam bots, saving the world one spam bot to another at a time.

  6. silver Harloe says:

    Wow, that's a really good article.
    This is actually a terrific site.

    1. silver Harloe says:

      I fear the SEO advice you’d get from a spammer. Probably something like “pay us to have our bots link to your site on a bunch of pages we’ve spread across the web.”
      But you’re running a community, and get your money from patrons instead of ads, so the real SEO advice you need is “you’re doing fine, man. The searches that lead to your site are probably already conducted by the kinds of people you want, and making your site #2 on every search would just add more asshats and spammers.”

  7. methermeneus says:

    stop by Serpent Street for some dragon fin soup.

    Ah, the legendary dragon cuisine!

    Also,

    mighty Dragon Temples, tended by the grey-haired dragon priests.

    fus roh dah!

    Oh, come on, you knew that one was coming.

    1. tmtvl says:

      Now I’m curious what you were linking to, ’cause the only thing I can think of is a tea house called the Jade Dragon.

      1. methermeneus says:

        Me or the spammer? The spam is for gold farming on a mobile game called Dragon City. I linked a wiki article about an episode of the 1990s anime series “Slayers,” in which (gluttonous) main characters spend the whole episode trying to catch a dragon for the one chef in the world capable of cooking it properly… only to learn it takes months to cook.

        1. Writiosity says:

          Unfortunately, the link doesn’t work ;p It’s just a highlightable piece of blue text that does nothing.

          1. methermeneus says:

            Weird… does a plain text url work?

            http://kanzaka.wikia.com/wiki/EP07_(Slayers_NEXT)

            EDIT: Not only does it work, but it automatically formats as a link. Why did I bother with tags, then?

            ANOTHER EDIT: If anyone’s wondering why I didn’t think something was wrong after tmtvl’s comment, I just didn’t blame anyone for not actually clicking a link in a comment on a post about spammers. I’m not quite that sleep deprived.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Why did I bother with tags, then?

              They look nicer.

    2. Galad says:

      I really don’t think a Dragon City would offer dragon fin soup anywhere. Sounds to me like offering soup made of human flesh in any real life restaurant >.>

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Dragon city does not automatically imply that its inhabitants are dragons.Unless the fishtown in philadelphia is populated entirely by fish.

  8. Leocruta says:

    Dammit Shamus, now I want to visit dragon city.

  9. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Pssst,Shamus,youve missed the marlow briggs spammer.Or are you glad that he is a new reader?

    Linky

    Quotey:

    wonderful issues altogether, you just received a new reader.

    What would you recommend about your publish that you simply made a few days in the past?
    Any positive?

    1. Leocruta says:

      “a few days” it says. Hah.
      Nice catch Daemian. Though I do wonder how you caught it. Are regularly reading old comment sections?

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        The rss gives you any comment that gets posted,no matter the topic,even if it gets deleted afterwards.

    2. Jokerman says:

      Marlow Briggs did have some wonderful issues.

  10. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Namestaj

    Now this is a curious one.Its a furniture site,but that name is written in a balkan language that maybe a dozen of your readers speak,if even that number.Though I didnt check the website itself,but it didnt have the domain of any of the balkan states.So I wonder if this is just a name randomly picked with a translator,or is the maker of this one from an ex-yu country trying to keep their heritage alive in their shitty spambot.

    1. Armagrodden says:

      Huh, that is in the name space. I had just assumed they’d misspelled namaste.

  11. Dragmire says:

    I’ve only heard “beat” in reference to text as a part of a script(Like a news beat).

    Do any of the bots grab random pieces of text from the articles or headlines in an attempt to make them look more believable?

    1. Jokerman says:

      I’m no plumber, but it doesn’t seem to be working.

    2. Fists says:

      Possible it’s been picked up from music blogs and stuff too.

      1. Addam says:

        I just assume that it’s a common Google Translate (other translation services are available, no purchase necessary, batteries not included) mistranslation?

  12. Syal says:

    I’m still waiting for the “Forbidden City Guide” that just links to a 403 page.

      1. Sunshine says:

        Whoops, bad tagging. All I wanted to do was applaud your comment.

  13. Benjamin Hilton says:

    Blah blah spammers blah. Was Kotor really that long ago? I swear it was just a couple months.

  14. Bloodsquirrel says:

    I’m going to respond to every article posted here now by calling it a ‘beat’. You’ve brought this on yourself.

    1. Miguk says:

      I prefer “magnificent goods” myself. Shamus always provides the highest-quality goods.

    2. Sunshine says:

      Going back to the old Mass Effect beat. Haven’t been down these streets for a while.

  15. MadTinkerer says:

    The “beat” thing is almost certainly a translation issue.

    Back in the early 2000s, there were several games translated by a guy who called himself Don Miguel. Don Miguel was a computer science major in Russia who was able to translate Japanese games into English, and amazingly most of it actually made sense. There were numerous artifacts in the translation where a word was translated a certain way multiple times and poor Don had no idea it was just very slightly wrong because he wasn’t fluent in either language he was translating. But because it was translated as the same word each time, you could easily figure out what was meant.

    “Beat” is probably a translation of a term either in Russian or Chinese. Like maybe “beat” and “post” are the same word in their language. Or perhaps they actually use the English word “beat” that way, and it remains the same word when translated. Like how “cuisine” means “kitchen” in French, not “fancy food”, but English speakers never use the word correctly.

    Maybe one way or another the spammers really sincerely appreciate the great “beat” you wrote, and that really is what they meant to say.

    1. Philadelphus says:

      Linguistic speculation ahoy!

      Maybe…you know how you can speak of a police officer “walking the beat,” meaning, essentially, a prescribed route or place to be at a set time? I wonder if that was confused with post as in “a sentry standing at his post,” also referring to a prescribed place to be at a set time. And then simply not realizing that those two meanings are but one of many for each word, and not necessarily the most common ones, leading to the conflation of “beat” and “post” in every context.

      Now we just need one of those XKCD text-replacement things that swaps “beat” and “post” to be able to finally understand how spambots see the world:

      “Keep me beated.”
      “Feel the post!”
      “I just need to run this letter down to the Beat Office.”
      “The postings will continue until morale improves.”

      1. Sunshine says:

        “The postings will continue until morale improves.”

        Is it mean to suggest that this is the Twenty Sided motto?

    2. Disc says:

      It would make more sense in a music post, since songs are sometimes called “beats”. It’s a bit more colloquial though. You could almost make sense of the whole post if this was somekind of Hip hop/rap blog about making beats (the non-verbal portion of hip-hop/rap songs) in an old-school way with turntables, sampling etc. and the spammer was looking to learn how to do it.

  16. Philadelphus says:

    Namestaj:
    Magnificent beat ! I wish to apprentice while you amend your web site,

    I’m now struck with a vision of “Web designer” from some alternate timeline were it functions like a medieval profession: “I spent seven years as an apprentice, learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Then I became a journeyman, learning, PhP, Ruby, Python, and database management. It’s been a long road, but I’m finally in the process of crafting my masterpiece, a website so grand it’ll earn me the rank of Webmaster.”

    1. Philadelphus says:

      Agh, “where,” not “were.”

  17. Ninety-Three says:

    “Beat” is a term in certain gaming circles where “good beats” essentially means “Got lucky, did well” and “bad beats” the opposite. I wonder if this bot is trying to use that term instead of just mangling the language.

  18. Two things. Number 1, What are assless chaps? I fear googling it will reveal an assless human being. Number 2, On top of being adequate with SEO, maybe these “clever” spammers should gain some grasp of the English language, before they comment on this D&D/Anime/Gaming/Programming/Music/RPG/Personal/Spoiler Warning/Podcast Blog where people proofread their comments. I think that’s everything? Oh wait! D&D vacuums now too.

    Looking forward to that academic talk on vacuums.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Assless chaps are a kind of trousers with two holes in them so that your buttcheeks can be exposed.They are usually associated with the bdsm scene.

      1. JAB says:

        Well, sort of. Chaps, when referring to non-bdsm kinds of things, are essentially 2 legs connected with a belt, worn over trousers, as protection for horse riding. Sometimes worn as actual protection, sometimes worn more as a costume than anything else.

        SFW article on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaps

  19. silver Harloe says:

    This vacuum, as you can see, sucks, much like the main story elements in Mass Effect 3, which (5 hours of lecture…)

    1. Philadelphus says:

      …I see, clever! Especially the way it all ties together because much of it takes place in the vacuum of space! Genius!

  20. City Of Golden Crab:
    Fantastic beat! I will surely be delivering “assless chaps” in academy! Your knowledge on this subject is as tantalizing as car vacuum!
    Magnificent goods from you.

    1. Shamus says:

      Very nearly deleted this one by reflex.

      1. Makes you wonder how many spambots are actually people with terrible english skills and mental problems, doesn’t it. Who knows, maybe there really IS a Dragon City after all!

        And maybe, just maybe, they also have some pretty good car vacuums there…

      2. Reed says:

        And just like that, the game of “trick Shamus into deleting your actually-meaningful message as spam” is born… ;)

        1. Richard says:

          Best of all – Nobody will ever know your score.

          1. Sunshine says:

            automated scoring
            i do trust your effeorts and will promote your messages game.

  21. Sunshine says:

    I’ve also understand your stuff previous to, but you lost me after. Maybe it was too specialised or in-jokey.

  22. DivFord says:

    I got sent this beauty the other day:
    “Just dont be offended with my words but your skin is not good. Maybe you’ll try to {0} some {1} {2}? Btw, I have a {3} for you.”

    Unless I’m wrong, and I am never wrong, this is the starting symbol for a generative grammar which the bot forgot to actually run…

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      I’m always amazed by the quantity of generative templates I get in my comments. Not just for one message, but a whole compendium of possible messages, with the filler words all there, just waiting for randomized selection.
      None of them are really even passably human though, but it’s fascinating how many variations they are failing to select from.

  23. Alexander Mulkerrin says:

    But Shamus, Dragon City is a real place :D

    Have you never played Endless Legend? The Drakken are an entire race of dragons and have fantastic cities; all towering obsidian cliffs with fancy ornamentation in gold. You can have as many dragon cities as you like :)

    I would post a link but I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a spammer…

  24. Shamus have you looked at https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-spamshield/
    or https://blogspam.net/ ?

    wp-spamshield sounds really promising (and fast), while blogspam.net seems like a nice alternative to akismet.

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<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

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I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

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I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

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