"Mcafee 2008": On a forum spam rampage

You know, security forums have always had a wide mix of people using them on a day to day basis. Sometimes, people we would generally consider to be bad guys - hackers, rogue security app vendors and the ghost of Hitler - would turn up and plead their case, often with hilarious results. Now though, a disturbing trend is starting to emerge and it sort of makes me mad, in a Hulk Smash kind of way.

Forums are now being invaded with incredibly brash, mindless spam that promotes McAfee's Beta Test program. A while ago, someone calling themselves "Mcafee 2008" started spamming the living daylights out of forums with the following message:

"McAfee runs a beta testing program before releasing its latest industry-leading security software to the world. This quality assurance program relies on savvy computer users who want to help make cyberspace a safer place. Joining the beta program is a simple process, please visit: http://beta.mcafee.com"

Here's a screenshot of them in action:

Nice. The approach taken by this person is to spam the same message as many times as possible, across as many different forum sections as possible, in as short a time as possible.

Want an example of that, too? How about some Spywareinfo spam? As one Admin put it,

"Note to mcafee2008: one topic about this is sufficient. We deleted the other three."

In fact, Googling this spam machine up reveals a whole pile of forums spammed with exactly the same nonsense. Here's more. And more. And more. And....well, you get the idea.

So, who is this chump?

Well, a quick look at their Email address leads us back to the following website:

.....awesome, a still-not-ready "PR Company" or whatever they are, operating out of a PO Box.

See, this garbage annoys me. There are enough people asking for help on security forums without having to deal with morons like this. Every second wasted cleaning up forum spam like this means someone who needs help is left waiting round, probably a bit forlorn or teary eyed or whatever.

If you run a forum and happen to see this idiot register, ban them, label them as spam, call them rude names, whatever.

As for McAfee - this person is probably doing your standing on security forums no good whatsoever. You might want to think about reigning in their little rampage?