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What's with all the spam threads?

dc655321

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And just as important, why is their number of views non-zero??
 
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dc655321

dc655321

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Afair the administrator asked members to report spam posts but the report function requires to open a post that you want to report.

Ahhh. Thanks for answering my second question.
 

Wombat

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And just as important, why is their number of views non-zero??

Amir likes Wagyu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagyu

Thomas likes SPAM: untitled11.pngIt is a British thing.
 

sergeauckland

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As a relatively new member here, and having been active on other forums, there does seem to be an awful lot of spam on here that I don't see on other forums. Is there a technical reason why this spam gets through here but not elsewhere?

S.
 
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dc655321

dc655321

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If threads cannot be created without membership (assumed), then the membership admission process warrants closer scrutiny/tighter buttoning down.

Just my $0.02.
 

DonH56

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Takes resources to do that... I help moderate another forum and spam is an eternal problem. We have a team to help moderate; perhaps here The King and His Loyal Moderator may need to consider recruiting Additional Peons to help serve as spam-rousters.

For that matter just giving the ability to delete posts to a few more (very carefully chosen!) folk might help.
 
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dc655321

dc655321

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Takes resources to do that... I help moderate another forum and spam is an eternal problem. We have a team to help moderate; perhaps here The King and His Loyal Moderator may need to consider recruiting Additional Peons to help serve as spam-rousters.

For that matter just giving the ability to delete posts to a few more (very carefully chosen!) folk might help.

Yes, those are good ideas. Thanks for the suggestions.
However, I feel like prevention would go further to addressing the problem, rather than mitigation after the fact.
I'm not privy to the forum framework, so I don't know what is or is not possible on that front.
 

Sal1950

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The spam people are very inventive, aways had to keep someone with their finger on the trigger at my Linux site.
 
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dc655321

dc655321

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I'm guessing the ASR site uses the WordPress framework?
Perhaps @amirm or @Thomas savage can confirm.

I just tried a fresh signup and it seems to me that the reCAPTCHA checkbox ("I am not a robot") would be super-easy for spambots to defeat.
As in, "why bother", easy...

So, a couple of suggestions from here:
1) use the CAPTCHA option requiring new users answer a simple arithmetic question, or
2) use the Honeypot feature (invisible widget to lure spambots into completing it), or
3) have new-user submissions go to human moderators for approval/admission

1) or 2) are cheap to try, requiring a small investment in an admin's time.
3) is significantly more demanding of resources.
 

DonH56

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The trumpet forum I help moderate uses (3) and it is by no means foolproof since legitimate-looking users sneak through. It is running very old BBS code and nothing else has worked, the spammers subverted pretty much everything else. That said the sysadmin is a trumpet player/professor and not an IT guy (though he has learned a lot in managing that forum for 20+ years now).
 

Wayne

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Just a curiosity question: The spam I have seen here is so far off topic as to be useless (ie there is no political message, no sales pitch, no request for action, etc.), what do the spammers get out of it? Just bragging rights or the pleasure of disrupting the lives of others?
 

DonH56

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Other than pure mischief (which may well be a significant objective for such warped and sick minds) most include a link someplace that when clicked will generate revenue for the site, (try to) install malicious code, or (try again to) harvest email addresses and such for further mischief.
 

amirm

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I'm guessing the ASR site uses the WordPress framework?
Perhaps @amirm or @Thomas savage can confirm.
No, we don't use wordpress.

So, a couple of suggestions from here:
1) use the CAPTCHA option requiring new users answer a simple arithmetic question, or
2) use the Honeypot feature (invisible widget to lure spambots into completing it), or
3) have new-user submissions go to human moderators for approval/admission
We did #1 in another forum and it made no difference. I think all of these are human spammers hired for nothing in other countries. So no amount of Q/A will deter them.

As to other options, this is a pendulum between user inconvenience and allowing spammers in. I rather have the work and have an easy registration than reducing spam a bit.
 

amirm

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Just a curiosity question: The spam I have seen here is so far off topic as to be useless (ie there is no political message, no sales pitch, no request for action, etc.), what do the spammers get out of it? Just bragging rights or the pleasure of disrupting the lives of others?
They are trying to "hide" their messaging to some extent as to not get deleted. But the format and style remains the same, trying to promote something -- I don't read them carefully enough to know. :D
 

Soniclife

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Is it possible to set an alert up when 'new' users create threads so you get an early heads up? Or make all threads from 'new' users require an admin to authorise them before becoming public?
 

DonH56

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Another forum does something like that but it takes a lot of human monitoring to check each and every new post from all new users. I can't recall which it was, but for one a new user's first five posts had to be read and released by a moderator before you were given permission to post freely.
 

Thomas savage

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No, we don't use wordpress.


We did #1 in another forum and it made no difference. I think all of these are human spammers hired for nothing in other countries. So no amount of Q/A will deter them.

As to other options, this is a pendulum between user inconvenience and allowing spammers in. I rather have the work and have an easy registration than reducing spam a bit.
Totally agree..
 

Soniclife

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Another forum does something like that but it takes a lot of human monitoring to check each and every new post from all new users. I can't recall which it was, but for one a new user's first five posts had to be read and released by a moderator before you were given permission to post freely.
That's why I suggested it just for thread creation, and just for 'new' users, if 'new' users were ones less than 24 hours old I'm not sure how much none spam would get flagged.
 
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