4 ms·
Users? yeah right. More like spammers and bots from the software I've seen on the blackhat forums. Spammers have learnt their lesson and now know age is a fac
by brador 15y ago
Users? yeah right. More like spammers and bots from the software I've seen on the blackhat forums.
Spammers have learnt their lesson and now know age is a factor in deciding if it's a spam account or not and are getting in early and big.
- mmahemoff 15y agoI haven't heard that before. Wouldn't a real user be just as likely to join late (when a service has gone mainstream, bigged up by Oprah etc) as a spam account?
- vidarh 15y agoI think the point is to build up a large list of accounts to cycle through that have existed for a while and seen sporadic legitimate looking use, rather than having to use a new account when suddenly starting to churn out spam. A new account that immediately starts posting a lot is a big red flag. An old, active account that slowly ramps up posting volume is likely a lot harder to distinguish from a "real" user that is getting more active as the service gets bigger. So you slowly build up a big portfolio of accounts and keep them "warm", and then spread your spamming over a larger volume of accounts instead of trying to create new ones and pump out lots of spam faster than they can block you.
- felipemnoa 15y agoOther metrics can be added to detect a spammer. If one account never posts but then suddenly starts posting like crazy, that is a red flag.
- resnamen 15y agoIf there are spammers targeting G+, they must be doing a crappy job, because it hasn't even registered on my radar as a fairly active regular user.
- jsnell 15y agoG+ spam would probably be closer to blog spam than email spam. It'd be hard to get any noticeable volume of direct spam going from a single account given the asymmetric circle relations. But spam postings would still be useful for e.g. black hat SEO, or for making a Google account look more valid for the purposes of abusing other Google services.