That section shows a maximum of 12 (the oldest having joined Dec 10th). I wonder how many more have joined the past couple of months (or even further back) and never posted.
Apparently , this person/bot was also in the other seniors forum, but was soon removed from that forum because they realized that the name was actually a spy bot and not a person. He said that even though it appears that the person/spy bot is only in the announcement section, the spybot is actually reading whatever information it is searching for in the whole forum. We can’t change anything that we have already written about ourselves, but I think we need to be very careful from now on.
I don't know a lot about it but know that humans set up these accounts on many forums and use computers to use the search feature looking for keywords or phrases. Anyone can do this manually or with a computer search program even without joining and the only thing I can see they would find that isn't already public might be on accounts where members have their profile visible only to members. I think this is why some have kept their profile private. Most searchers sell info to advertisers and debt collectors both legit and scam. What is strange about this Susan account is it logs in and out several times a day.
That's interesting. There are so many legit bots and web crawlers here and everywhere else, why would someone make themselves conspicuous like that? Just create a bot of your own to vacuum up whatever data you wish and no one will notice...everyone else is doing it openly. Heck, we have 14 robots here as I type this. Besides, you can use any browser to search on all activity for any specific user (or specific subject/words) here or on any other targeted forum or website (although that's not quite as large a net that's cast.) There must be more to this than I understand. Your admonishment to be careful what we disclosed on the internet is always good advice. I know I'm not always perfect with that advice.
This is what the admin for the other forum posted when he let everyone know that the spam bot had been removed.
I just said the same thing regarding vacuuming up data. My profile is unrestricted so folks can look at my posting history. I've found it to be a handy feature that I've sometimes used looking for activity by others. Regarding data in our Profiles: it is up to each of us to decide how "accurate" we are with that. So wish me a Happy Birthday when that date rolls around if you want to I'm not too concerned about what's posted here, although I try to be reasonably cautious. Most of the scams I've heard about originate from places like Facebook, where people are interacting daily with Proper Noun friends and family members using real names about their specific detailed daily activities.
Thanks for posting that. I've not been a mod for awhile. The gun forum I was with got way more trolls (overt pot-stirrers) than I've seen anywhere else, but I don't recall bots even being on our radar screen.
No, it doesn't make sense to me either. The admin from the other forum was simply guessing, as we all are. The software would record which sections the bot was visiting and, as you say, we get bots all the time.