[CarlitoBrigante]

Originally Posted by TheInsaneManiac

Some bots may not even be bots upon registration. Some sites pay their members to go register on popular sites and give their database their account details. Later on these details are run through their bot script and spam the forums and even sometimes private messages. This is why before I delete a spam bot I would delete their private messages. I remember one time a bot sent out 1,000 messages to most of my members. Luckily I caught him before he sent it to the rest as I have a lot of members.

Exactly. There are many offering a few bucks for every successful registration and posting to forums. And not all of those doing so are mysterious shady companies; even the big guys do the same, sometimes camouflaging such offers as "fan packages" or supporter packagers and stuff like that. Needless to say, there is no protection against this type of spammer.

In my experience, gaming and movie forums are the most affected by this, especially since viral marketing became such a big business.