Facebook BOTs??

[WorraLiberty]

Why is Mumsnet being invaded by BOTs all of a sudden?

We've already had the 'Everyone from my church group has blocked me on Facebook' BOT about a million times.

Now this one yet again (in AIBU)....Link to Google search

Forgot link to AIBU post

Here

What's a BOT?
(Sorry, curious!)

Robot?

I'm not real techie noisy but here goes; a 'bot' is a computer program that accesses and posts a message or performs a task on different websites in rapid succession.

And again different poster can we not block the IP address ?

I don't think it's a bot. I think it's a mentally unstable person.

Well their joining a hell of a lot of forums if it's an actual person and posting identical posts

Based on what exactly 2319?

But re the church group one, didn't the poster come back several times in the discussion?

Oh! I thought it was a person
Posting all that!

> Based on what exactly 2319?

Based on Occam's razor I suppose. It's a pretty pointless use of a bot — what's the point of it? Plus the posts aren't exactly identical. Plus … the kind of person who obsessively posts repetitive nonsense online is exactly the kind of person who would get banned from everyone's facebook so the story kind of makes sense.

@SugarPlump

And again different poster can we not block the IP address ?

Hi there,

If only it were that easy! The IP addresses used are never the same, though - slippery little suckers .

We've no idea what the purpose of these threads is; for now all we can do is track 'em down and zap 'em.

Please keep reporting

IIRC bots identify weakness in commenting systems, so they can spam the boards with advertising later. It's illegal over here.

Oh well, hopefully at least enough of us are aware of this one now to get it deleted quickly and stop people wasting time on it.

That's interesting, balls.

Guess we just need to keep reporting then.

If it was test-commenting so that it could post ads later, wouldn't it post innocuous things like "I agree" rather than drawing attention to itself?

That would seem reasonable Twentythree9ten. The last bots I remember seeing on here started threads about the stock market, in Danish. Very odd.

and again -