Currently I am tracking LinkedIn group-spam from 53 domains.
Since I have access to several groups, I have the opportunity to compare posts and this makes it possible to spot:
- When the same bot account is promoting different websites.
- When bots promoting different sites post at the same time, and the same daily interval.
In the image I’ve provided, you can see that three different websites are being promoted at the same time. I ask you to consider the following and decide which is more likely:
- Three LinkedIn members posted links to their favorite websites at the same time.
- Three different automated bots posted links promoting websites, at the same time by coincidence.
- The three bots are run by the same bot-master who has them set to run in a batch.
I’m going with #3. So I think it’s the same bot-master running scripts to promote these websites. If you perform a whois lookup on the three domain names you will find that two have privacy protection enabled, but one reveals the owner of the website. I’ll let you do the legwork.
Considering the previous question, I am offering two possible conclusions:
- There is one bot-master, promoting sites for multiple clients and he runs his scripts at the same time.
- All three sites are owned/operated by the same person.
I’ll let you decide, and of course there may be other possibilities. Consider that I’ve just shown you one sample and I may review hundreds of these posts on a daily basis.
In some cases the similarities between sites, bots, schedule are so close that I start looking for other details to link them together. I’m not going to say anything more, except that on the Internet, there is no place to hide and ultimately no privacy.
The man behind the mask is always revealed.
Originally published at GreenNotice.net
