Anatomy of a "link spammer"

Link spamming with music

I have encountered several annoying link spammers in the past. Who is a link spammer? A link spammer uses the comment/quote functions in blogs and Twitter to promote their web site (which is usually a garbage site). Most often than not, the link spammers are bots. They are auto-configured to post links and music videos to random web pages, tweets, or blog posts.

Recently I encountered a sockpuppet and the link spammer, and reported them both. The link spammer (who was quoting random tweets with links to his pyramid-scheme website) was taken down within a few hours. The racist sockpuppet still continues to spam random Tweeps with his hateful replies. It shows how social media treats spam. Adding random links to several tweets as a comment/quote is an easier way to get suspended than posting random nonsensical text and images, even with nasty content.

Link spamming with personal web page

Later I encountered another link spammer, whose entire aim was to spam random people with a link to a specific song. The song eventually reached one billion views on YouTube. I don't think the link spammer contributed to the views significantly. But I am sure that link spammer was a bot as it was spamming random people en masse, without engaging to comments.

 
Today's encounter was with a person who would reply to random tweets with his garbage irrelevant website, hoping unsuspecting users would click his garbage link - check his twitter profile to find it out yourself. Sometimes these links are harmless, aiming to get traffic to their web site. Other times, they are a phishing attempt. Be careful of what you click, especially when it comes out of nowhere from a link spammer. My blog comments are moderated due to the severity of link spamming. They are quite a nuisance.