[kwlug-disc] OT: wordpress.com email follower spam

[Paul Nijjar]

On Fri, Apr 13, 2018 at 07:40:33AM -0700, Ronald Barnes wrote:
> Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote on 2018-04-12 11:42 AM:
> 
> 
> I have a similar problem, maybe someone can help me understand the business
> model of the spammers.
> 
> 
> I have some Drupal sites with "Contact Us" forms behind captchas.
> 
> I regularly get spam messages from those contact forms (one site in
> particular), often not even in English.

Do they have clickable links for you? Are they wanting you to write
them back? If so then you have your business model. 


> I've often wondered what is the point of solving a captcha to send the site
> admin spam?  It's not like they're posting comments - it's disallowed.

It depends on whether solving a captcha is cheap or expensive. In my
experience the Drupal captchas were cheap to solve and can be solved
via automated means (but this was a few years ago). Weirdly the ASCII
captcha did a better job of keeping people out than the other ones. 


- Paul