Spammers - WARNING 1 June

[ExcelsiorUK]

Good morning, I just noticed on arrival that several spam accounts seem to have been registered - might it be sensible to stop new registrations temporarily, assuming they are coming from new registrations?  It's a pain when this happens I know...

[Peppermint_M]

It happens all the time. If we suspended registration then actual real new members would be put off. 

What you need to do is report the spam post and a Moderator will deal with it. We are all volunteers so it sometimes takes us a little while to get on to it, but it is dealt with.

[VaderFan2187]

@Peppermint_M do the mods actually need us members to report? Because I feel they do a good job cleaning up the forum and I feel exasperated zapping the spam bots because I am afraid I might accidentally hit a link (I'm paranoid I know ) but if the mods need/appreciate it I will continue to report them.

[Trekkie99]

Reporting spam is super easy so I see no reason to not hit that flag button. And as @Peppermint_M said, we're all volunteers. And I think that as members it's our job to keep other members safe from these things.

Edited June 1, 2017 by LegoMonorailFan

[ColletArrow]

I think it's been mentioned before, but a lot of spam I see uses a whole web address as the topic title. If the forum could detect and delete all such threads immediately, it would make life significantly easier. I don't know how one would implement such an action, however. (The other common type is one where the title is a random, out-of-context English sentence, and the post is a link pretending to be a link to a football or other sport match livestream. It probably isn't, of course, but it makes spotting and flagging them easy!) 
Once a topic has been flagged as 'spam' however, I notice the mods will always eradicate it quickly, a credit to you all.

[Andy D]

I know spammers and spam bots are a pain, but as @Peppermint_M said, the moderators do a great job of eliminating spam quickly. I'm sure the moderators do not mind how many of us report, but just report... they will take care of it. Some of the suggestions have been going around for years and I agree that making it difficult for new members to get in and post would be a pain. Compared to the numbers of new members I believe the number of spammers is relatively few. 

When I see spam, recognized from a subject, I either ignore or report. I should report more.

Andy D

[Capparezza]

19 hours ago, ColletArrow said:

I think it's been mentioned before, but a lot of spam I see uses a whole web address as the topic title. If the forum could detect and delete all such threads immediately, it would make life significantly easier. I don't know how one would implement such an action, however. (The other common type is one where the title is a random, out-of-context English sentence, and the post is a link pretending to be a link to a football or other sport match livestream. It probably isn't, of course, but it makes spotting and flagging them easy!) 
Once a topic has been flagged as 'spam' however, I notice the mods will always eradicate it quickly, a credit to you all.

Seconded on that title with web adress in it... I can't see any legitimate use for this? Might be a simple fix to get at least a couple of days break from those spammers, if the source code is available and / or can be adjusted.

But I too noticed how fast those get taken offline. Thanks for the work, Mods!

[VaderFan2187]

19 hours ago, ColletArrow said:

I think it's been mentioned before, but a lot of spam I see uses a whole web address as the topic title. If the forum could detect and delete all such threads immediately, it would make life significantly easier. 

This. Definitely this.

[Stash2Sixx]

The system we have in place works very well.  You can't penalize everyone because a few bad apples mess things up.  Yes, continue reporting the spam, it's appreciated.  Usually I don't even need to check the reports...I log in before midnight my time and find a ton of it right away.

[MAB]

I don't see the point of temporarily stopping new registrations. It is hardly a new thing, these spam posts have been coming for years, haven't they. The only way to stop them would be to permanently stop new registrations, which is not a good thing.

 

[Elysiumfountain]

I don't think I've ever seen spam posts on the forum before. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough or I don't notice them lol. What are these spam posts generally consisting of? 

[Capparezza]

Hmmm... some posts deleted in here, eh? Seems the Mods have classified them as spam, too...

@Elysiumfountain Mostly an http address in the title and some text in the body. Very easy to spot.

[Elysiumfountain]

@Capparezza Ahhh makes sense. Thank you for clarifying, now I'll know one if I see one!