Fun with bots

[QuikSand]

So the latest wave of bot accounts seem to show up and immediately post one gigantic thread with a long series of absurd characters...

Do we think this is a strategy top help locate places that are still up and running, but have been abandoned, and are therefore good candidates for a later follow-up invasion? (I confess I don't understand the point of bot accounts, really... mainly just to establish more links to various websites to make them look like better search engine results?)

[Bobble]

I was wondering that too. If you're posting something, why not just go ahead and fire away with your sales pitch/fishing link/annoying shenanigans? What's the point of tipping your hand there?

[QuikSand]

My best guess is this is the same line of thinking as the answer to "why do these dumb phishing emails contain bad spelling and grammar... it just tips me off that it really isn't my bank?"

And the answer is, apparently, "If they did a great job disguising things, they'd trap way too many smart people, who would catch on to the ripoff down the pipeline. Making it an obvious fake weeds out smart people, and thins the responses to only people who are really good targets to dupe." Makes sense.

[bhlloy]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

My best guess is this is the same line of thinking as the answer to "why do these dumb phishing emails contain bad spelling and grammar... it just tips me off that it really isn't my bank?"

And the answer is, apparently, "If they did a great job disguising things, they'd trap way too many smart people, who would catch on to the ripoff down the pipeline. Making it an obvious fake weeds out smart people, and thins the responses to only people who are really good targets to dupe." Makes sense.

I wonder whether is the main reason, or whether there is an even simpler explanation - that these kinds of bots are really low margin and run from places and by people that don't need or expect a huge margin, and the people who run them aren't that smart and/or don't have the resources or the particular inclination to make them better. I highly doubt the people behind "BizaccenKnnect is leading company provide best HR solutions" are graduates from MIT or some sophisticated multi national gang specializing in con artistes.

I will say the quality of phishing emails seems to be going up recently, got one the other day supposedly from Amex where the spelling mistakes were pretty minimal and the graphics looked pretty damn close, and somebody posted one on Facebook that looked almost perfect. I can imagine for people who don't know how to check the actual sender and aren't at all email savvy, the success rate on those has to be pretty damn high. But then phishing (harvest logins and credentials) and these kind of mindless bots we seem to be getting semi regularly are two different things.

[QuikSand]

I guess the logic is: sending crap emails is free, sending bots to log in at various sites is basically free... but taking follow-up phone calls and doing personalized work on rubes takes hands-on stuff you have to pay people for. You don't want to pay anyone to do work when the strike rate is going to be really low.