Call me naive, but what is the point of spamming forums like this? What do they gain? Especially in the case of the ones that cut and paste former comments into unrelated threads?

Why do spammers spam? To advertise. Why here? I have NO clue! But the cut-n-paste jobs are to get them to 5 posts, which many forums have set as the minimum required in order to begin posting links. They want to be able to post links to whatever it is they're advertising.

Ah ha! Thanks, Trinity!

It's usually because they're trying to pimp a product without any costs in advertising involved.

Occasionally, it's a troll who's trying to pass along a virus or trojan horse which will damage the heck out of your computer.

It's one thing when we're all sitting around chatting about a particular product and where to find it. It's quite another when a poster with just a small handful of posts comes on here like gangbusters trying to post up one link after another, and the overwhelming majority of his or her posts are spent trying to pimp a product.

Actually there is an entire system that pays people to spam the internet about a product and you get paid per ad you post on forums, website comments, online classifieds, etc... I ran in to it while looking for at home internet jobs. Entirely not legit and they often ask you to pay for a list of ads you can place or sites that could be used for spamming.

I've always suspected this, but never knew how to confirm or disprove it. It sure makes sense. (Funny you should mention this now--just before coming here and reading this, I deleted such a message--in Polish--from another forum that I help moderate.)