{"id":6164,"date":"2022-03-09T11:45:03","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T11:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clickceaseblog.kinsta.cloud\/?p=6164"},"modified":"2023-01-16T08:29:25","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T08:29:25","slug":"spambot-vs-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clickcease.com\/blog\/spambot-vs-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Why & How Spambots Damage Your Marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When looking at the online world of good bots vs bad bots<\/a>, it’s clear that spambots are firmly in the bad bot camp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But most people look at spambots more as an annoyance, rather than a malicious or damaging element. Yes, they fill up your inbox with generic emails for fake viagra, or flood your website comments with mumbo jumbo or spam links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, spambots have a more insidious element, and one that can be genuinely damaging to your online marketing. Spambots can make elements of your business difficult to manage – for example responding to emails and messages, and can even damage your carefully crafted SEO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So – what is a spambot?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a spambot?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Spambots are automated programs designed to send spam emails or post spam comments on websites. They are capable of sending thousands of spam comments every minute and can account for a large volume of website traffic on some sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although email spam and comment spam are slightly different, they are actually the same kind of bot activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spambots can be used to crawl the web and scrape emails into a database. With a database of emails, these spambots can then be used to flood inboxes with generic emails, which in some instances might contain malware downloads or phishing scams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comment spambots can be used to interact with social media sites or websites, often flooding comment sections with anything from gobbledygook, to hate speech and even links to malware-infected websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What damage can spambots do?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The main complaint with spambots is that they flood inboxes and comment sections with useless content. This can make managing an inbox much more difficult and can result in missing genuinely useful emails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this isn\u2019t the worst that spambots can do\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Spreading viruses<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By their very nature, spambots often contain malicious elements in the form of spyware and keyloggers, links to spoofed websites, or even viruses such as Trojans and ransomware. In short, a spam email that makes it through you spam filters could be clicked accidentally causing all manner of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for spam comments, although usually just a nuisance, often the links within these comments can lead visitors to malicious websites or contain drive-by installs of viruses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Traffic flooding<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Another problem with spambots is simply the sheer volume of traffic. Some spambot attacks can cause websites to go offline, and they can even cause damage by spoofing your own website pages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, some DDoS attacks use spambots as part of their arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n