What is this all about?

[Zick]

Ok, this has been driving me nuts lately trying to figure out why people are doing this and what they are getting out of it?

Lately there has been a rash of new users that join and post in threads (and usually they have been helpful replies, not just spam posts) but always include one or more link(s) that have been either a smilie face (like this ) but if you look at the properties of it, it actually links to a different website.
One in particular actually was hosted from an Adult XXX site. These below don't appear to be the case but what is the point, especially since they never show anything?

Here are a couple of examples;
If you look at everyone of their posts, you'll see they always include the links. Some times they show up as a red X bad picture icon or sometimes you don't see anything but you can see them clear as day in the search result window.

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/s...archid=7644794
http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/s...archid=7644744

Edit: weird, the links seem to change so the above don't work now.
Here is one of their profiles, just click on "find all posts by xxxx" and you'll see what I'm talking about.
http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/member.php?u=115408