homogenized spam

I'm not sure what you're referring to here (the overnight hamsters must've gotten it) but spam is not just for us (heh). This is gonna be a generic answer.

It's for our SEO, most likely. And, yeah, there are the challenged out there who do click and download and buy and hand out passwords and all of that. Those folks would not be doing it if there wasn't a modicum of possibility of success. Plus it is cheap/free to do. Hence, the cost-benefit analysis is: spend nearly no time or money, and the potential is for a good payoff. Downsides are few for, even if one were to be pursued by authorities, we'd be talking about jurisdictional issues most likely (wanna try having process served in Mumbai, from Milwaukee?).

Thanks, the spam being for the SEO makes some sense to me.

The amusing thing re the signature lines is that they can't be seen unless someone is logged in. And Google won't spider if it's got to log in. So sig lines - at least this is my understanding - are a bit fat waste o' time here.

As for the remainder, we get to it quickly, with help from the membership of course.