Health forums, such as Natural Medicine Talk, are very inviting targets for spammers. Some people are paid just to get links 'out there', whether they're for products, services or website promotions. Many are from other countries outside of the United States.

Spamming can be done directly, or in a more sneaky way, indirectly. They post "leading" messages which forum members reply to, and once they're comfortable on the forum and 'trusted' by the other members posting on the...

They are referred to by many names such as "flamers" or "hijackers", but a troll is a troll. Below are just some of the characteristics and intentions of an average forum troll.

-When trolls initially join a discussion forum, they will typically post an unusually large number of messages, which is known as "flooding".

-Troll postings are often inflammatory (flamers), attacking threads because they "disagree" with the content....