What the heck is up with spammers?

[Scott]

I now am permanetly leaving the ban window open on my machine, I think there have been 20 since Wednesday night. Anyother sites you guys visit seeing this?

[DragonMaster]

About every forums.

[Bio-Hazard]

The main 2 sites I mod for have kept me very busy the past few days, most have been up in the rules section for some reason.............:(

[DragonMaster]

But there are some places I don't see any. Maybe that's because activation has to be confirmed by a moderator.

[p0lish]

yep
most sites i go to have that problem

[Miles]

The easiest thing to do and we can do it very simply is to set up a rule that applies to new members with their first 8-10 posts which doesn't allow them to attach links or any other documents to their posts, this would drastically cut back on the SPAMMING.

This would take about 5 minutes to accomplish.:whistler:

[Victor]

it's the holiday, contrary to the regular people, these people works extra hard during holiday season:).

[werty316]

Sorry Scott I'll try to ease off on the spam :lol:

I never really noticed that the flood gates have opened for spammers on other forums.

[s_gibson]

Scott we have been deleting about 10 users a day or better for months on my forum. Sadly I'm about a week behind. Only about 5 a week actually make it to getting their account authorized to post, but it is a huge waste of time deleting the users. Out of the 2500 currently signed up for out forums I'd guess 200 are spammers.

[PP Mguire]

When i used to attend other forums spammers where horrible all year long. Ive actualy only seen 2 spam threads on these forums. You guys keep it up really well.

[liqnit]

The easiest thing to do and we can do it very simply is to set up a rule that applies to new members with their first 8-10 posts which doesn't allow them to attach links or any other documents to their posts, this would drastically cut back on the SPAMMING.

This would take about 5 minutes to accomplish.:whistler:
this sound like a good idea.
isn't there an option to filter spam based on the link?
you are affiliate with many sites can there be a common Database that could be updated my moderators of known spam web addresses?
so that is a script get such a link then the post will be locked or the link will be deleted or even better - post is not viewable until check by an administartor.

[Miles]

this sound like a good idea.
isn't there an option to filter spam based on the link?
you are affiliate with many sites can there be a common Database that could be updated my moderators of known spam web addresses?
so that is a script get such a link then the post will be locked or the link will be deleted or even better - post is not viewable until check by an administartor.

Actually it's based off of the IP address used by the SPAMMER and most are using some form of DNS from their ISP that gives them a differnet IP address every time they log in. You could filter a range of IP addresses but then that would keep the innocents who also use that ISP from logging in. Some SPAMMERS are so sophisticated that they are bouncing their login to another DNS server that they are not even affiliated with and any kind of blocking maneuver only affects the innocents again.

There's even BOT software available for spammers that is very sophisticated and can clone good BOTs like those from Google, Yahoo, and other legitimate search engines.

Modding posts is another answer, this can be accomplished by having a group title for all new members for their first 10 posts or so. Every post from a member in this group goes into a que an has to be read by an Admin and approved before it is released.

When that member reaches whatever number of posts that you set as the upper limit (say 5-10) for that group they are automatically promoted to regular member status and their posts are no longer moderated. They only real negative issue associated with this method is that it could be hours or even longer before an Admin is on the forum to check the que and release the safe posts. This can be very frustrating for a new member, especially if they need help or have some good information for a thread.

[Das Capitolin]

Additionally, there are only three admins/moderators for this site, so they have their hands full each time they log in.

[liqnit]

i understand spammers can forge their origin.
the links they write in each message lead to a spam known address cannot that be monitored?

[mousiness]

yeh i got banned for it, how sad of me

[Kougar]

I rather like that idea of having the first several posts moderated... it would only need to be 3-5 posts to weed out almost all of them I'd think? Since the moderators have to remove all of the spam and spammers after the fact, it wouldn't be adding to the workload. But I agree, if there aren't enough admins on to readily approve posts then this would pose issues nonetheless, since we do have new users regularly posting for XFX Support.

[pc_man_iac]

I have seen a **** load of pron spam, and the cellphone/xbox spam guy a lot on the forums of a local computer store, and there has been a lot of the britney spears sex tape one, I don't know why there has been so much increase in spammer activity, but it is pissing me off

[Miles]

I have seen a **** load of pron spam, and the cellphone/xbox spam guy a lot on the forums of a local computer store, and there has been a lot of the britney spears sex tape one, I don't know why there has been so much increase in spammer activity, but it is pissing me off


In on word "CHRISTMAS" some people lose their common sense during this time of the year and will jump on deals they once would have shunned to get everthing that Jr. wants:jawdrop:

[DragonMaster]

they once would have shunned to get everthing that Jr. wants
Even Viagra?



. . . . . . . . . Oh, I forgot, we receive these all year long.

[dracos]

yeah I've noticed lately that my spam box is getting rather full... I used to not get to much

I've had to delete a few from my forums as well...

[GIBSON]

The easiest thing to do and we can do it very simply is to set up a rule that applies to new members with their first 8-10 posts which doesn't allow them to attach links or any other documents to their posts, this would drastically cut back on the SPAMMING.

This would take about 5 minutes to accomplish.:whistler:

Sounds like a very good idea Miles. Anyone else thinking this as well?

[Schwarz]

Yah this isn't only happening here on bjorn.
Most forums all have the same problem.
Of course it seems that bjorn controls in well so far a lot of those post are made during the night or in the early morning.
But SPAM is a constant growing problem.
I mean just look at advertising its as worst.
We get a bunch of pamphlets in our mail boxes, there's ads all over our highways, on TV, on the radio, in our email, it is starting in our gaming (I'm saying starting but its already been done for a while now), we surf the net and get popups...well this has been taken care off but some clever sites sometimes manages to get through with clever mind games...(usualy on porn sites but thats another story :P) and now of course its been done before but its getting more and more popular on forums.
We even need to have antiadware program so we don't get screwed over but advertising...
Its really getting ridiculous and i'm wondering if there will ever be a stop to it.

About Miles idea of course making it harder for spammers is always a good thing :p
But don't worry they will still spam anyways even if there's no link in their spam threads they would still be able to post a URL.
And even if you tried to put a filter that would filter http:// or www. or whatever they could just change the letters for something else \/\/ \/\/ \/\/.handbags.com
I'm not saying there's no way to stop it but spamming is a major problem everywhere on the internet right now.

[XJnine]

Here's something that I use on my system that helps with ads, spyware, and pop-ups. http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html


One use of the hosts file is ad filtering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_filtering). This is accomplished by adding a line to the file that maps an ad server's hostname (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname) to an address that will not satisfy the browser's request for the ad. Since no additional programs are necessary to do this, hosts file based ad-blocking has a near-zero memory and CPU footprint, as well as requiring no loading time. The hostname for an advertiser may be obtained by right-clicking on the banner or advertisement, then clicking properties from the context menu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_menu). This will indicate the full URL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL), of which the part between the double slash and first single slash represent the hostname.


This hosts file directs tons of known junk to an invalid IP so you don't have to be annoyed by it or subject to the spyware the ads may contain.

[GIBSON]

Here's something that I use on my system that helps with ads, spyware, and pop-ups. http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html



This hosts file directs tons of known junk to an invalid IP so you don't have to be annoyed by it or subject to the spyware the ads may contain.

AHA! The old school way of filtering ads! Be carefull when fidling with the hosts file though... ;)

[borschtBomber[SS]]

Yes the spammers are in full force. There are some sites where I swear 9/10 new threads are all spam posts. Its rediculous man. Its bad enough that we get crap in our mail and email, but now we have to see this crap in forums.

[p0lish]

I think the amount of spam forums are getting now is approaching a ridiculous level. Almost every time I come here there will be a spam post with around 10-15 views that has not been removed yet :) Anyways you are doing quite a good job moderating!

[Bio-Hazard]

This morning on the sites I mod for there were about half a dozen spam posts each on them...........but it's the week-end and spammers have more free time on their hands..............:(

[whowalks]

yer I belong to some smaller ausy sites the dont have problems but thats just geography and size of user base ?? I think

[Schwarz]

They usualy aim for popular websites with lots of members.

[=CDU=Above]

I got them over at CDU too. Never had a problem until recently. I'm haveing a good time editing them though. I change their words to things like "I like salty yogart." and "I fart when I pee." Things like that.

[whowalks]

I got them over at CDU too. Never had a problem until recently. I'm haveing a good time editing them though. I change their words to things like "I like salty yogart." and "I fart when I pee." Things like that.

:grin: :grin: :grin: :grin: , nice one

[dracos]

Well I don't have to worry about spammers anymore... my forums are no more...

Sunday i went to do an update to the new version and security patches, well it decided to re-write my directories of my webiste so the entire site was down for about 8 hours from Sunday to Monday.. fun fun that was getting it all back up..

If I would have paid attention and check out the support forums for my forums I would have saw that all kinds of people had the same problem i did with the latest upgrade... oh well, maybe again in the future with a differnt forum program but that was just sickening..

now all I have to worry about is all the spam now in my inbox

[Miles]

Guys,

In these times when we're having contests where your number of posts are considered for the monthly prize, I wanted you to know that every SPAMMER's thread is permanently deleted and if you've posted in that thread your post will be too. This lowers your total post count by 1 or how ever many posts you've made in that thread when it's deleted.

Don't want anyone losing a prize for fighting spam, just use the tool to report the thread and we'll take care of it from there.:icon_tiphat:

[Das Capitolin]

now all I have to worry about is all the spam now in my inbox

I had a customer called me on my personal cell phone to tell me how frustrated they are with the spam in their e-mail. She went on for several minutes about how it disrupts her day, and she can't even get any work done. I asked how many junk e-mail per day are received.

She replied: seven. :jawdrop:

It took every ounce of energy not to hang up. I think I get about seven per hour on a slow day.

[DragonMaster]

Only 7? That's what I got in less than 12 hours after suscribing to the MSI Canada contest... (Only had 1-2 per week before in my gmail box)

EDIT : Oh, and talking about spam, I just received one asking for donations to help for the Tsunami.

[s_gibson]

Cleaned the user database on our forum today. Deleted about 1250 accounts from spam bots that were unable to complete the registration process. This is the second time in about 4 months I've had to flush the unwanted users.

Quite a few get by though. I'd say this site is doing a pretty good job keeping the forums spam free. Can be quite a job sometimes. I have about 10 guys modding for spam now and it keeps them busy at times. Dont' know how many people are modding these forums, but their rarely seems to be any Cialis or home loans on this site.

[=CDU=Above]

Can we just fire bomb their offices? Seriously, someone needs to go after they annoying idiots.
Sorry to hear about your site dracos.

[dracos]

Can we just fire bomb their offices? Seriously, someone needs to go after they annoying idiots.
Sorry to hear about your site dracos.

Ah well.. live and learn i guess y'know..

but I just got the domain dragonsteelforums.com so I've decided to run the forums as an entirely separate part of the site , or actually separate site in itself.... need to get working on it when i get the time, hope to have it up by the first of the year.. going to be something different in the way of forums I hope..