Nissan or other entity spamming forums

[DChapman]

Last week I got the following spam post on my forum:

Quote:

I just got news that Nissan wants to give away a new Frontier. They have this competition where you can design your own truck and if yours is chosen they will give it to you. Heres the link if you wanna try it: www.nissan-usa.com/ultimatefrontier

It was the members first post and they registered two minutes before

Quite obviously spam. I deleted it and out of curiosity did a Google Search for ultimatefrontier and low and behold that very same post showed up in results all over the internet with the same exact modus operandi.

Today, my website was spammed once again with the following (brand new member who registered minutes before):

Quote:

Check this site out www.nissan-usa.com/ultimatefrontier Someone else posted this earlier on the site and I thought it was cool. Do it and let me know what you think of it. You build your own truck and the person with the best Nissan Frontier design wins.

The first one annoyed me. This was angered me a great deal.

I therefore went to the nissanusa website and called their consumer affairs line at (800) NISSAN-1 (or 800-647-7261) and spoke with a very nice representative named Yolanda. They basically denied that Nissan or their advertisers would ever do something like this. I explained that they have one of two problems:

1. They or their advertisers are doing this and it needs to stop before they get some seriously bad publicity.

2. Some other entity is doing it and they need to stop it before they get some seriously bad publicity because of it (basically being framed).

Yolanda said they didn't have anyone there who could deal with it but would create a file.

I have no doubt some of you have been spammed with this crap. We should not allow firms to use our forums as their advertising and spamming playgrounds, especially if they have huge advertising budgets as is. Hell, for $7.95 a month they could buy a banner ad from me which would be seen by over 100,000 unique people. I have no doubt that some lame marketing executive read in some magazine about viral marketing and decided to give it a shot, and is failing miserably.

Regardless, feel free to call (800) NISSAN-1 (or 800-647-7261) if you have had this issue arise. Or post here. If it continues, I will escalate this to the next level.

Examples of this spam on other forums:

http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/forum...?t=9196&page=1
http://www.yourfunshop.com/nascar/me...ges2/1293.html
http://forums.go.com/abc/thread?threadID=136871
http://www.nissan-infiniti-forum.com...pic/16/16.html
http://bbs.off-road.com/ubbthreads/s...=&view=&sb=&o=

And thousands more.

[LeeD]

thanks for the info...I hadn't seen it yet, but I will keep my eyes open for sure!

[Mike Feury]

We had the exact same warning about Court TV a few days ago. Such a similar occurrence so soon afterwards makes my guess more likely

Quote:

I'll bet this is the product of some shady SEO or Internet Marketing consultant hired by a clueless company.

Someone's knuckles need serious rapping!