Spambots: The In-Depth Guide

What is a spambot?
Spambots (or they can be simply called spammers) are people who join the forums, but only to advertise or cause trouble. If they were advertising a product, their username would likely have something to do with that product. For example, a new user could join the forum with the username 'Febreeze' and all of their posts could be advertising Febreeze. If you see a user advertising a product, check their other posts to make sure they're all advertising the same product. If so, report one of their posts and I'll take it from there.
Sometimes, spambots join forums just to stir up trouble. They might try to get members to leave the forum, turn members against each other, or just spam and troll the forums. Report any spambot posts that do not comply to this forum's rules.

Spambots and Trolls: Are they the same thing?
Yes, and no. Spambots can join a forum to troll or advertise, or a mix of both. Trolls might've joined the forum with good intentions, but ended up being annoying.

I see 'bots' in the Who's Online? section. Are spambots and bots the same thing?
No. Spambots are users who join the forum to advertise or cause trouble. Bots are simply search engines that crawl the forum, adding information to their database. You may see bots such as Google, Bing, etc. Bots do not actually post, because they're just automated programs that add information from the site to their search engines.

How are spambots dealt with?
If anybody sees a spambot, report them and I will ban their IP address. Banning an IP address means that once the address is banned, no person with that IP address can make another account. This is to prevent the spambot from creating another account and continuing to spam the forums with that one.