Atheist war

[michel123456]

It appears from time to time. A poster named Atheistwar + something you will find in Speculations.

This individual posts his ideas, and never involves into any discussion.

He gets responses from other forum members, and of course all of them are surprised from the low level of his argumentation. The fact is that all people involved in these threads disagree with him.

They shouldn't.

Because I got the feeling this person is making a catalog of atheists.

[Sayonara]

Is he making a list and checking it twice?

[the tree]

To be clear, it's a bot - or a human acting very bot like. If you google the contents of any of his posts you'll find them on hundreds of forums.

 

I'm fairly sure it's an attempt at humour. Remember the "how to tell if your son is a hacker" meme? I think it's an attempt at a forced version of that.

 

Anyway: the reason you shouldn't respond to those posts is because there isn't any point.

[Genecks]

It's more than likely a man behind a curtain, because the threads were made in speculations. I'm not sure how intelligent bots are, but I don't think they are that smart. Furthermore, the bot would have needed some incentive or determining factor to decide to post in that the speculations board. The board is often ambiguous. Maybe if a bot were made to analyze and cross-reference words and phrases on the other boards that this bot also looks for, then a bot to spy on the spambot could be produced.

[ewmon]

Such postings seem to come from someone named Dennis Markuze who lives in Montréal Canada and who may have also made death threats. There is more here on this phenomenon. Of course, others may simply copy and paste his stuff, but who would want to?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

To be clear, it's a bot - or a human acting very bot like. If you google the contents of any of his posts you'll find them on hundreds of forums.

 

I'm fairly sure it's an attempt at humour. Remember the "how to tell if your son is a hacker" meme? I think it's an attempt at a forced version of that.

 

Anyway: the reason you shouldn't respond to those posts is because there isn't any point.

It's a human, or perhaps a human aided by a computer program. I once looked through the server logs, and he doesn't behave like a bot -- he got to SFN from a search on Google.ca for "science forums."

 

There's a few other tricks I have to see if someone's a bot, and he doesn't smell like one. Must be really bored, I guess.

[ydoaPs]

I wonder how many e-mail addresses this guy has made in the past year.

[michel123456]

It looks so awkward, real counter-commercial. All links are demonstrations of the contrary of the supposed beliefs. Totally satirical, and instructive I have to say. Looks like the work of an intelligent person. I wonder maybe it has something to do with The Onion.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion)

[the tree]

It's a human, or perhaps a human aided by a computer program. I once looked through the server logs, and he doesn't behave like a bot -- he got to SFN from a search on Google.ca for "science forums."

 

There's a few other tricks I have to see if someone's a bot, and he doesn't smell like one. Must be really bored, I guess.

A pseudo-bot then: acting like a bot because he can't build one.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

A pseudo-bot then: acting like a bot because he can't build one.

 

The bots have gotten pretty clever these days. We have custom question-and-answer verification on the registration page; vBulletin lets me write whatever questions I want, and people have to supply the correct answer. The bots complete this in about two seconds.

 

I'm fairly certain the bots have a database of questions and the correct answers. Whenever there's a new question, a human answers it, and the answer is saved for later. The database is probably shared among spammers for a fee or something.

 

Keeping ahead of spam is hard.

[the tree]

No automation is complete, this guys idea of automation is, based on what you said - limited to copy pasting and apparently, Google. Kind of lame but I'm guessing he's fairly proud of his system - he might even have a checklist.

 

Super smart spambots are weird, I don't understand why anyone willing to put in that much effort doesn't just get a job.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Spamming is a job. You can make a fortune off of it. The guys who write the automated spam software sell it for around $600 a copy.

[ydoaPs]

Spamming is a job. You can make a fortune off of it. The guys who write the automated spam software sell it for around $600 a copy.

 

Do large numbers of people actually click spam links? I'm the type of person that would avoid the product being spammed if out of nothing else sheer annoyance.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

A tiny percentage do (less than 1%), but when you post millions of links on millions of sites, if you get twenty people a day to buy your $100 Cialis, you're doing fairly well.

[ydoaPs]

A tiny percentage do (less than 1%), but when you post millions of links on millions of sites, if you get twenty people a day to buy your $100 Cialis, you're doing fairly well.

 

So what you're saying is that I should go learn how to program.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

There's also a bit of investment involved. You have to get a botnet (or rent one out), or find a crime-friendly ISP and pay for some servers. Then there's the programming, the web site development, accepting credit cards, and hiding the funds so nobody gets suspicious.

 

Tricky business.

[padren]

There's also a bit of investment involved. You have to get a botnet (or rent one out), or find a crime-friendly ISP and pay for some servers. Then there's the programming, the web site development, accepting credit cards, and hiding the funds so nobody gets suspicious.

 

Tricky business.

 

You sure know a lot about spam bots Cap'n.

 

 

 

Btw, I'm still expecting my you-know-what from you-know-where, if I don't get it soon I'm telling my Nigerian prince friend to drop you from our collective business arrangement.

[michel123456]

Here is a hard comment on him:

David Mabus --INSANITY --Deeply deranged, disturbed individual who believes James Randi has cheated him out of a million dollars, and who vents by spamming websites and email with his angry tirades. Certifiable. Needs immediate mental health care. His real name is Dennis Markuze, and he lives in Montreal, Canada.

 

From an impressive list at PZ Myers http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/plonk.php

 

No bots, there are all humans.

(thanks Ewmon for the info.)

[Double K]

He forgot to add (My personal favorite) Rickrolling in his list of spamming techniques....

 

Seriously tho, isnt cyber crime pretty easy to trace? usually there's an isp trail and surely death threats are taken pretty seriously. I know in Australia we have a "cybercrime" police division of the federal police...

[the tree]

Seriously tho, isnt cyber crime pretty easy to trace?

No. It's expensive, time consuming and there's a lack of precedent for what constitutes evidence.

usually there's an isp trail

Court orders are needed for an ISP to release information about their customers. Also, depending on how organised the crime is - it can still lead to a dead end.

High level spammers may have hijacked a commercial server and set it to start doing their dirty work while destroying it's logs. In the case of fraud, often the trail leads back to an Internet cafe where someone paid in cash.

and surely death threats are taken pretty seriously.

I've received a few violent threats on the Internet over the years, only on occasion by people willing to show their face. I'm about as low profile as you can get and even I don't have the time to take that sort of threat seriously. In the case of celebrities or politician or whatever, there is someone somewhere whose job it is to work out if a threat is worth paying attention to.

I know in Australia we have a "cybercrime" police division of the federal police...

Yeah, cybercrime fighting is big. Fraud, corporate data theft, security risks to government systems, organised crime syndicates communicating over the Internet, child pornography, cyberterrorism - there is a lot going on.

[rigney]

Suspision?:! Growing up, a friend of mine had a couple coal miner friends of his Dad living in his home. While being congenial and well spoken, Andy, one of the two; was a professed atheist. Andy died and a very dignified wake was held in his honor at my friends home!!.

I didn't witness the event, but supposedly some of the peasentry gathered to do him honor, were heard to remark: "Look at poor Andy, All dressed up and no place to go.

 

Ignorance is a blessing in disguise. Walking in its midst daily, most of us never suspect being a part of it.

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

I've never met a religious person without wonder, and never met an Atheist without doubt?

[StringJunky]

There's also a bit of investment involved. You have to get a botnet (or rent one out), or find a crime-friendly ISP and pay for some servers. Then there's the programming, the web site development, accepting credit cards, and hiding the funds so nobody gets suspicious.

 

Tricky business.

 

As far as I've looked into spamming it's not actually illegal...it's equivalent to junk mail. Spambots are not illegal either...here's the legal notice from the Xrumer site:

 

The software available for purchase on this website fully complies with the laws of USA, Canada, Australy, Europe and Russian Federation.

All parts of the software are protected by international copyright laws. Any attempt to disassemble the software will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible under the law."

 

Xrumer is the daddy of spambots apparently and costs $540 to start and $10/month thereafter. Botmaster the owner reckons you'll be in profit within a month. When I see it's specs one appreciates why you forum admin have a hard time:

 

XRumer is a software application that automatically posts your messages to forums, guestbooks, bulletin boards and catalogs of the links (as well as into livejournals and wiki). In a word it is an autosubmitter. Currently available version is XRumer 5.0.12 Palladium. More info about updates...

 

Below are listed main specification and features of XRumer

 

Multithreaded submitting: over 50 simultaneously running threads possible! (30 threads are recommended for optimal performance under 128 Kbps bandwidth)

Software can perform registration at forums (if necessary for posting messages) and automatically fill in the required fields. Upon successful registration XRumer posts the user-specified message and/or links.

The powerful built-in proxy-server checking script locates available proxy-servers worldwide, choosing anonymous addresses among them.

Software is able to work with lots of different types of forums and guestbooks: phpBB and PHP-Nuke with any modifications, yaBB, VBulletin, Invision Power Board, IconBoard, UltimateBB, exBB, phorum.org, wiki, different types of bulletin boards and even custom-written code.

Attention: unique feature – software works around EVERY possible type of protection from automatic registration, including:

- Pictocode protection (tickets, captcha), which look something like: "Enter the number you see in the box". Details...

- E-mail activation protection. Details...

- Java-script protection. Details...

During the process of posting a detailed log is created with precise path-links to posted messages so that you can check every link and every posted message afterwards.

A built-in proprietary "Question-answer" system.

A variations system, using which you can post up to 10000 messages all looking different but with similar contextual meaning and the user-defined hyperlinks in them. It helps to broaden the key queries (for Search Engine optimization) and protect your posts from being filtered out by Search Engines (that is, your posts will be included in SERPs).

If the forum has more than one category, the software chooses the one most suitable for the message, otherwise it sends the message to off-top, flame sections or the like, and in case those do not exist - to the most visited category on the forum.

BB-code can be used.

The following forum base processing tools are included: repeated links deletion, hit descending sort, service denial according to customizable black list, and various filters. The program informs the users about availability of new versions and possesses many other powerful features.

 

The system is fully user-independent and requires minimum skills to handle: you only need to choose the proper links database, create a message text with one or several hyperlinks and hit the 'Start' button. THAT IS ALL.

 

XRumer software package includes the Hrefer program and databases with links to more than 102.000 forums.

Minimum required system specifications:

 

Windows 98 / 2000 / 2003 / XP / Vista, 1GHz or faster processor, 256Mb RAM.

Price: $540. Purchase...

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Spambots aren't illegal (well, I dunno what the CAN-SPAM act covers), but most ISPs and hosting companies won't tolerate them regardless. And often the links they post are to sites doing semi-legal things; we get a lot of pharmaceutical spam, and I'm certain that some of the links lead to malware.

 

A built-in proprietary "Question-answer" system.

Aha. It's probably what I suspected. Well, I'm going to have to try something clever.

[rigney]

Hope this gets through! There is no such thing as an "ATHEIST". Quote, Quote, and a simplistic, Unquote. If you feel diffused to commit yourself to anything, at least commit yourself to self indulgance. Get on with your life, this joker may be here for a long time!!?