What's with the useless, inane, post-boosting thank you posts?
 

Hello,

My boss is responsible for moderating our community sites.

He's noticed an increase in what appear to be useless "bumps" of old threads, with inane platitudes and useless content ("What a great idea. Thank you for posting this extremely helpful information."). These are typically new users, and it's their first post. The post contains no link(s), no hidden content that we've been able to find, etc.

He's scratching his head because he cannot figure out any reason for this. Are they attempting to exploit some back-end system (private messaging the members, etc.)? Is it simply an attempt to discredit our community by filling it with meaningless drivel?

I'm sure that some of you all are familiar with what I'm talking about. I'm not even sure what to search for, although I've done some trying (apparently most of us don't use the word 'inane' very often :D )

Thanks for any insight you can offer us.

It's human spammers testing your defenses. Those accounts will go dormant then all come back spamming links and/or private messaging your membership.

Check to see if any images where uploaded. One could attach an virtually invisible image link (1 pixel by 1 pixel). Then later change the image link on their server to a huge image and thus trashing your forum.

Thank you, folks. This is, at least, some start towards understanding the issue.

Justin, I've not been able to find any images associated with the posts.

Max, I was pretty sure they were humans (we used to have bot issues, but a plugin helps greatly with that). Poor 3rd world jobs ... so sorry about the human condition.

Is there any way we can know if someone is PM'ing spam?

--------------- Added [DATE]1386172388[/DATE] at [TIME]1386172388[/TIME] ---------------

Is the information presented here:

http://bobschwarz.com/combatting-vbu...t-and-pm-spam/

still worth anything?

For pm's you can install this mod, https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=304325 and keep a eye on them that way.