what is a spambot?

[Anonymous]

Jeff, I see you closed the Beauvoir Scandal thread because it was being attacked by spambots. That's a shame, because for a few of us, it remained the only source of information we had on the case (granted, also a source of mis-information).

In any event, I see a lot of hot threads have been attacked by spambots and thus closed. What is a spambot?

[jsteele]

First, there is nothing preventing anyone from creating a new Beauvoir thread. The subject is not off-limits, just that thread.

Hackers have hijacked hundreds of thousands of computers which they are now able to control. These are called botnets, and have become a huge illicit business. Among other things, these botnets can be used to send email spam or post spam on websites. In such cases, they are referred to as spambots. The purpose of most of this spam is to get you to follow a link to a website that distributes malware with which they hope to infect your computer and expand their botnets.