I've been getting random private messages on IRC advertising a channel, and degrading a channel I'm in, using very inappropriate language. The words are exactly the same except for the channel they degrade. Their names are very likely randomly generated. Are they bots? I've been receiving these on both of my open clients. Is anyone else experiencing this? The channel they advertise is [elided].
I have experienced the same exact thing with 2 spammers advertising the same exact channel, and degrading my #BasicNote channel. I have no clue who they are or where they came from. I joined the channel they are advertising to see there are hundreds of people in it, but then left immediately.
It happens from time to time. I've surprisingly had it happen more to me on Freenode than on Efnet though. :/ Just ignore them, there may be ways to report them but I'm unaware of how to do that on Efnet and their website isn't very helpful.

Update: Looks like it might actually be the #help channel?
You can try to make yourself harder to discover if you're not in the same channel as somebody, which will often help.

User mode +i will keep you from showing up in channel lists (set by default most of the time), and +g will send you a notice when somebody tries to message you (rate-limited). On freenode, +R will squash the vast majority of spam (requires that messages come from users that are authenticated with network services).

If you run your own channel, +nps is kind of the minimum set of modes you want- +n to require that users be in the channel to send messages to it, +p to make it more difficult to discover what channels your users are in and +s to keep the channel from showing up in a global list.
jcgter777 wrote:
I've been getting random private messages on IRC advertising a channel, and degrading a channel I'm in, using very inappropriate language. The words are exactly the same except for the channel they degrade. Their names are very likely randomly generated. Are they bots? I've been receiving these on both of my open clients. Is anyone else experiencing this? n The channel they advertise is [elided].

Yea i just got this on my LAXBOT account about #LAXBOT. It was from [elided].
If they're actually joining a channel, chances are the channel isn't +p and +s (as Tari mentioned); this is the case most of the time I see random ad bots. However, all my experience is limited to EFnet.
Here's another example, joining #NOS on EFnet and some other channels (#NOS on a regular basis). The message:
Annoying spambots wrote:
[removed]
Removed the message because you're basically parroting their spam here on Cemetech.
  
 
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