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Are there really bots going around filling out random guestbooks on the Internet in 2020?

Yep. You put a form on the Internet that might show a URL to the general public, a bot will fill it out endlessly in the hopes of spewing malware links.

I had a personal website from 2007 that ran for maybe 10 years. Unfortunately I had an open comments section and it was not paginated. Once bots made a half-million comments the site wouldn't load anymore. Decided to just shut it down for good.

I had another WordPress site that was hacked by prescription medicine scammers. I thank bots for ruining the early internet.

Last year I briefly erected a CMS that I imagined had no abuse potential. I got asked by my host to fix it (I nuked it too), because spammers were registering accounts with it... setting the email address as the target of their spam.

I apparently got into trouble here because I was tired of WordPress and decided to try something else... and look where it got me.

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