Been Getting Hosting Company Forum Spam

August 4th, 2007 by Chris

Over the last couple months seemingly innocent posts have been appeared in the Website Publisher Forums that taken individually would look normal, but as a group they are very suspicious.

One new member would first post in the introduction folder, and then in the web hosting reviews area (the right forum, so they aren’t dumb spammers) asking for a review on a host they were considering. Then over a couple weeks other new members would come and reply, and start their own threads, and there would be actual conversations. It all seemed pretty normal.

Except, the members do not post anywhere except in these hosting review threads and sometimes in introductions. Except, the posting style of all these members is nearly identical. Except, the IP addresses of these members are often nearly identical (as if they were working next to each other at the same spamming sweatshop in India), and all of the IPs were from spam hotbed countries (you know, Russia, India, Malaysia, Indonesia). They also none use signatures or avatars, when almost every normal forum member does.

The thing that really gave them an edge though was an apparent no link policy. Only occasionally would they actually post links, and never in the first post in a thread, normally they’d just post the domain of the hosting company they were promoting.

If it had been just one thread and one member I don’t think anyone would have ever noticed, but with so many threads and so many members it started to become obvious, and the IP data cinched it.

They were promoting the following hosting companies and websites, and as such I would have to recommend you never use such companies. I cannot be sure that these hosting companies were paying for this forum spam, so I won’t say that they well. But just the risk of them being the type of business to do that would make me very nervous to host a website with them.

whreviews.com
ahosting.biz
webhostingbuzz.com
emedianow.com
247-host.com
onthespothosting.net
hqhost.net
reviewcentre.com
igotfree.com
igotspace.com

If you run a webmaster forum or are a moderator at one, try doing a search for these names in your forums, you might have the same thing going on.

No related posts.

Posted in: Website Management »  by: Chris

2 Responses to “Been Getting Hosting Company Forum Spam”

  1. Dan Schulz  Says:
    August 4th, 2007 at 2:42 pm

    Chris, I’ve noticed this elsewhere online as well, but didn’t think anything of it until I read this blog entry. I’ll pass it along to the administrators of those respective forums.

  2. Sean Spurr  Says:
    August 5th, 2007 at 1:14 am

    ReviewCentre.com isn’t a host, unless they’ve used the same name with a different domain.

    Well found Chris.

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