when the cat is away

[alpha1]

when the cat is away,the mice will play.

that seems to be true here on these forums as well.it seems that at certain times of day/night,when moderators are scarce,these spammers start showing up like vermin.

[Cast]

My work place loves that saying while the boss inst there, though we still cant really play, you never know whos watching.

[alpha1]

My work place loves that saying while the boss inst there, though we still cant really play, you never know whos watching.

hope the boss is away often,lol.

[alpha1]

what are these spammers thinking?
who would actually click on spam links on av forum?

[DavidR]

The answer is that they don't think, but for the most part do what they get paid to do (or the bots are programmed to do).

Do you remember our conversation about search engines constantly constantly monitoring/indexing the forums. They also seek to feed of the popularity of the avast forums, by link spamming their wares in the hope it comes up on a search also.

When trying to optimise a site so that the search engines look favourably on it and push it higher up the returned hits, link popularity is one such tool, get your links on a popular site and your ranking could also rise.

So throw in a few links and keywords that people are likely to search on, like product names and you can see that this can promote both the product and the other site.

[alpha1]

david,wow,very interesting,i had no idea; i thought they were just promoting their products to forum users.

i'll never look at spam the same way again.

[DavidR]

It is trying to cast a bigger net, but they wouldn't mind if some fool clicked on the link in the sites that they drop their spam.

Now you see why what we say about other products could be inadvertently promoting them.

[alpha1]

It is trying to cast a bigger net, but they wouldn't mind if some fool clicked on the link in the sites that they drop their spam.

Now you see why what we say about other products could be inadvertently promoting them.

yes,but even simply mentioning  product(s) could have similar effect;heck even trashing them could have that impact as well.

in short,its unpractical to completely refrain from mentioning other av names.

[DavidR]

Much less start topics about them

[CraigB]

alpha1 do you really need to make a post everytime a thought comes into your head, this forum is quickly getting cluttered with from what i can tell meaningless posts by yourself wanting to use the avast forum as some sort of chatting place, have a look back at your 170 odd posts there all mainly babble.

[alpha1]

craig,altho you lack manners sometimes,its ok; can you please enlighten me as to what "general topics" means please,thanks.

[CraigB]

craig,altho you lack manners sometimes,its ok; can you please enlighten me as to what "general topics" means please,thanks.

General topics are for discussing other security issues aside from avast and new and interesting advisary topics and not so much being gereralized into a chat room for you to build your posts on things that have been discussed so many times before and worse yet is keep dragging these topics out for so long on usless dribble.

I maybe one of the few that are saying it but believe me everyone is thinking it.

[alpha1]

I maybe one of the few that are saying it but believe me everyone is thinking it.

you're either a mind reader,or someone who really thinks way too highly of himself,and is (in your words "full of it").
i dont disagree that you and few others -like yokenny maybe,or bob(no offence to either)- are thinking it,but i really doubt that everyone is.
besides that,there isnt a high volume of posts in "general topic" category,so i doubt there's much harm.also, i try keeping the main topic (or title) of my threads computer related.
maybe more than 90% of posts or topics (even virus/av related ones etc.)are in some ways repetitive; if a subject or post seems repetitive to you,it may not be so to someone else; if you find something uninteresting,it may be interesting to another.
so please stop referring to yourself as "everyone" or "everybody",i really dont appreciate it.
if something seems old/boring/repeated/blabber/babble/uninteresting/etc. simply dont read it,or dont reply to it.

also take a look at some of the other threads,even more off topic than mine.

again,please get off my case.

[CraigB]

alpha1 little do you know 

[DavidR]

craig,altho you lack manners sometimes,its ok; can you please enlighten me as to what "general topics" means please,thanks.

The point is that this isn't a chatroom, but a support forum.

The avast! moderators give a great deal of leeway in the General Forum, which as its description makes clear anything and everything about this board. So we don't want it turned into a chatroom style sub-forum or it could well be closed as the original Off Topic forum was.