A lot of people are probably going to buy it (though I’d hope that the better-known internet marketers with their huge mailing lists will refuse to promote it, which will slow down sales) but after reading the sales letter for this software, I’ve realized that it’s not all that advanced/automated, so I’m nowhere near as worried about it as I am about a spam tool I’ve seen in action.
It’s a far more advanced forum spamming tool that’s very worrying because it seems unstoppable. And it’s very clever.
The source of this info was Paul Myers newsletter. You can read more concerns about this forum script in one of the free back copies of Paul Myers free Talkbiz newsletter
It keyword targets forums and uses auto writing based on a large number of phrases you put into a database to create unique posts for each forum you target. It’s very hard to tell it’s an automated posting. It can sign up for member only forums, and reply to confirmation emails, but can’t get around the captchas automatically.
What it does though is create a list of all the forums it couldn’t get into because of captchas, and that list is put into an Excel file which is emailed at the end of the posting session to a group of people in India, who will then go to the forums in question and enter the captchas manually for a few cents a time. They can do quite a lot of these every minute so the cost to the spammer is low.
Co-incidentally there’s a story in this weeks online version of the Guardian (UK) newspaper about employing people in India to get you past the captchas.
You can read more concerns about this forum script in one of the back copies of Paul Myers free Talkbiz newsletter – just about the best free newsletter online.
Hi, Phil – when I first heard about this software, I cringed. I remember quite well the problems you had with the old forum – and I have seen for myself the problems which can be caused when DOS attacks hit web sites, servers, forums etc.
I hope this software disappears into the ether quickly!
Margaret