I asked Google AI what would be the motivation to post like this
Primary Motivations
- Spam and Advertising: The most common reason is to relentlessly post unwanted advertisements for products, services, or adult content.
- Phishing and Malware: Bots often include malicious links designed to trick users into revealing sensitive personal or financial information, or to download malware onto their devices.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Manipulation: Spammers use bots to create posts with backlinks to their own websites, attempting to trick search engine algorithms into ranking their sites higher in results.
- Public Opinion Manipulation: In some cases, automated accounts are used to artificially amplify a specific political stance, movement, or product's popularity to create a false sense of consensus or popularity.
- Harvesting User Information: Bots might register and interact with users to gather email addresses or other personal data, which can then be sold on the dark web or used for future attacks.
- Building Credibility for Future Scams: Some bots make generic, seemingly legitimate posts over time to build a "human-like" post history. Once the account appears trustworthy, the owner can use it for more sophisticated scams or to sell the account to other malicious actors.
How to Combat Them
BBS administrators can implement several measures to mitigate bot activity:
- CAPTCHAs: Implement CAPTCHA or other challenge-response tests during registration and potentially for a user's first few posts to filter out automated sign-ups.
- Email Verification: Require new members to confirm their email address before they can post.
- Moderation: Manually approve new registrations or new user posts until they've established credibility. Recruit reliable members of the community to help moderate.
- "Nofollow" Links: Ensure that all links posted within the forum have the rel="nofollow" attribute. This tells search engines not to follow the links, which removes the incentive for SEO-motivated spammers.
- Behavioral Analysis Tools: Use plugins or external services that analyze user behavior (e.g., posting frequency, time spent on forms) to detect and block non-human activity.
- Honeypot Fields: Add a hidden field to registration forms that only bots would fill out. Any submission with this field completed is automatically rejected.
- Community Involvement: Encourage real members to report suspicious profiles or posts.
What are some CAPTCHA alternatives to stop bots?
How can a BBS distinguish a bot from a human?
What are some advanced CAPTCHA techniques that deter bots?
- How to Handle Trolling, Bots & Fake Accounts - Kaspersky
Jun 8, 2021 — This anonymity makes it easier for trolls to escape the consequences of their actions. Motivations for trolling vary,
- 9 Ways to Eliminate Spam in Your Community Forum
Oct 29, 2020 — 9 Ways to Eliminate Spam in Your Community Forum * Ensure links in your forum are set to 'nofollow' This tells search ...
- Who Creates Spam and Social Media Bots, and Why? - Yahoo
Jan 27, 2025 — In many cases, it's a bot—an automated account running on scripts, algorithms, or a mix of both. * Types of Bots on S
The behavior you are observing suggests the use of
sophisticated bots or paid human spammers (click farms) engaged in a long-term scheme. Their specific focus on "LA Film School" students is likely intended to add a layer of perceived legitimacy and niche relevance to your BBS community, likely as a precursor to some form of future exploitation.
Here are the potential benefits of this specific, repetitive pattern:
1. Account "Aging" and Establishing Credibility
The primary goal of these initial interactions is not the single post itself, but the creation of an "aged" and seemingly authentic user account. A profile that has existed for a few weeks and made a seemingly normal, relevant post appears less suspicious than a brand-new account that immediately blasts spam links.
- Bypassing Filters: These established accounts are less likely to be caught by automated spam filters or moderation tools that specifically target brand-new user activity.
- Building a 'Human-like' History: By using specific, plausible identities (film students) and asking relevant questions, they blend in. This history makes the account more valuable to the operators, who can then sell the "aged" accounts to other malicious actors.
2. Information Gathering (Data Harvesting)
The "relevant question" might be a tactic to elicit specific information from genuine users.
- Security Question Data: Users often inadvertently reveal personal information in forum discussions (e.g., specific projects they are working on, other schools they attended, the city they live in). This data can be used to answer security questions for future identity theft or to compromise other online accounts.
- Content Seeding: The questions might be designed to prompt the community to generate useful, organic content that can be scraped and used to train future, more advanced AI bots to post even more convincingly.
3. "Ghost Student" Fraud Network
This specific scenario is particularly suspicious given recent reports of widespread
"ghost student" fraud occurring in California community colleges and other institutions.
- Financial Aid/Loan Scams: Fraudsters create fake student identities to enroll, gain access to financial aid, government relief grants, or student loans, and then disappear.
- Legitimizing Identities: Posing as a student at a known institution like the LA Film School provides a "veneer of legitimacy" for the fake identity. The activity on your BBS could be a small part of a larger operation to make the fake persona seem more real across various online platforms before applying for aid.
- Stealing Resources: The accounts could also be used to gain access to licensed software or databases provided by the school.
4. Future Malicious Use
Once these accounts have "aged" and established minimal credibility, the operators might pivot to their actual goal:
- Spam Campaigns: They may eventually edit their old posts or create new ones to drop links to scam websites, malware, or products.
- Phishing: They might use their established "student" persona to private message other users with tailored phishing attempts related to job opportunities, course projects, or industry collaboration that lead to a scam.
What You Can Do
To protect your BBS community, you should implement stronger moderation for new user accounts:
- Manual Approval: Temporarily require a human moderator to approve the first one or two posts of all new users.
- CAPTCHAs and Email Verification: Ensure these are in place during the registration process.
- IP Monitoring: Look for a pattern of multiple accounts registering from the same IP address or range over time.
- Enforce Complete Profiles: Require new users to fill out more complete profile information (e.g., a bio, a profile picture) before they can post, as bots typically leave profiles empty.
