Registered, logged-in users recently got an additional facility for every Diary, and also every Diary Comment, posted within this site: a report button. At this current moment (Tuesday 14 August 2018) these are the option buttons available after pressing that button (choose just one):–

• This diary entry is/contains spam
• This diary entry is obscene/offensive
• This diary entry contains a threat
• Other

Registered, logged-in users also got an additional facility for every Diary Profile: a report button. At this current moment (Monday 20 August 2018) these are the option buttons available after pressing that button (choose just one):–

• This user profile is/contains spam
• This user profile is obscene/offensive
• This user profile contains a threat
• This user is a vandal
• Other

This diary post is about the first option ((non-email) SPAM) (you-tube (baked-beans are off)). OSM got going in 2004 and, from my POV, it is astonishing that it has taken 14 years to put a Report option in place (I joined StopForumSpam in 2009 and am a Mod on that site, so you will have to accept a strong anti-spam obsession in this post).

tl;dr: most SPAM is posted via bots; AFAIK that has not yet happened with OSM, but it is only a matter of time. However, OSM has been so tolerant of SPAM for so long that a host of human spammers has got used to feasting on OSM. Please login & report all spamming that you find (remember to check the Profiles as well).

There now follows a rambling exposition on the sources of SPAM.

You are never alone with an IP

(The subhead is inspired by the advertising for Strand cigarettes)

Telegrams became ubiquitous in the 19th Century & Western Union allowed multiple destinations. You should not be surprised to discover, therefore, that the first mass unsolicited commercial telegram was recorded in May 1864 (to British politicians from a dentist). However, telegrams were NOT free.

Our current problems with SPAM were probably initiated by the success of the Netscape Navigator browser, though that statement will take a few twists & turns to justify. Netscape (released 1994) was written by some of the same folks that had written Mosaic (released 1993) and initially was available for free, though that rapidly changed. Even though Mosaic development was funded by the USA government (and is the reason that Al Gore says he started the Internet), and was free in certain circumstances, it was a commercial product. In fact, a company called Spyglass licensed Mosaic for their own browser & Microsoft (M$) licensed Spyglass Mosaic in 1995 to create Internet Explorer. We now need just one more player to be able to try to justify the statement at the top of this paragraph.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote the code for all the initial components for a fully-functioning World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989 and gave it to the world for free (no copyright nor proprietary constraints of any kind). Perfectly astonishing. It was rapidly taken up and implemented worldwide. However, it was text-only. And — just like the astonishment for 1930s audiences that watched a sepia Dorothy open the door and step into a Technicolour Wizard of Oz world — moving from text-only browsers to graphical browsers like Mosaic or Netscape was utterly compelling.

You Cannot Beat Free

Netscape, released in 1994, rode the tailcoats of M$’s Windows 95 to commercial success. Folks in those days were prepared to pay for programs. Netscape flirted with free with v1.0 but changed to commercial with the 1995 v1.1. M$ quickly spotted the commercial possibilities. Bill Gates switched his stance, and placed M$ Internet Explorer (MSIE) into the kernel of Windows 98 & later (it is still there today, in spite of the anti-trust actions taken by the USA government & EU against M$) & promoted MSIE hard. They were successful, and Netscape is now dead, although it’s code was made open-source & became Mozilla Firefox.

So, at the dawn of a new millennium, the WWW is spreading and, if you know someone’s IP, then you can hack them with ease (the Windows 95/98/Me NetBEUI local-network protocol had zero protections against hacking & gave password-free root access to the disk from remote locations; it was a nightmare). Likewise, Bulletin Boards have become Internet Forums & hackers have discovered the commercial possibilities of SPAM. And remember, whilst email spam was also going wild at this time, we are talking about forum & blog-post spam at this moment. You know, like these Diary posts.

So What is Spam?

I’ve already talked about SPAM’s mother (the WWW & culture of ‘free’) but We Need to Talk About Google (the father) to get to grips with what on earth is going on.

Google is the 5,000 lb gorilla in the room in the early part of this millennium. As a search engine, Google ranks sites not so much by what the site itself is like, but rather by how many other sites link to it. The more that other sites point to a specific site, the more that specific site will rise within the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Entrepreneurs quickly realised this, and also realised that there were a massive number of forums & blogs that would allow them to place anonymous posts with links. And lo! Spamming was born!

There are two types of spammer:–

1. Stupid Spammers
2. Every Other Spammer

Stupid Spammers

Like most of the human race, stupid spammers do not bother to think for themselves. Somewhere, at some point, they have read or been told that it is a Good Idea to promote their business/site/hobby/blog by putting links to it into random forums,

There used to be lots & lots of forums or blogs that allowed anonymous logins, but not many today. So, they signup to OSM & make a Diary post. They are far too busy spamming to write anything that is of value to OSM users, and sometimes they are so stupid that they even forget to post a link. Or, indeed, anything much at all.

Every Other Spammer

Just like all things, 80% of the spammers fit into the other category, and even this one is a sliding scale of dumbness. Nevertheless, here are some of the ways spammers demonstrate glimmers of above-average intelligence:–

a. Using the Profile to Spam
The Diary post and/or comment is only to get the Search Engine to visit the Profile page. As with all OSM spammers, it shows:–
 
Joined: Today
Edits: 0
Traces: 0
 
But, somewhere on that Profile is a link.
 
b. The Sleeper Spammer
(these are few & far between - it also depends on the presence of an Edit function)
 
They post something innocuous (often a snippet copied from another post) but no link. They then wait, often many months. On return they edit the Profile/Post and add a link.
 
c. The 2-Link Spammer
The really intelligent end of the Spammer spectrum is far better at SEO than you are. Most spammers drop links to sites that are so obviously SPAM that it shouts loudly at you.These folks drop links to sites that look OK; odd, but not spammy. You then find that they are dropping 100,000 links across all the Internet to sites that all in turn contain links to their target site.

This whole thing could be continued indefinitely.

Please help by logging in & reporting spammy posts and/or comments and/or Profiles.