Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

Shortly after 8am an alert was posted by a member about numerous spam posts. I got to work on it quite quickly, deleteting 346 spam posts but quickly learned more were being posted by other users with the same IP address. I banned all 13 or 14 users but could not afford taking any more time to delete what appears to be at least a couple of thousand posts. I sent am email to forum owner/admin Jarred (MediaHound) in hopes he could use some mechanism to delete them more readily as well as block this IP address from future attacks.

We do not need any more alerts from members about the spam messages, I know they are there. I'll work on them as time allows if Jarred doesn't get to them first.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

Harvey,
Thank you for the thankless job you do for the org and its members.
:nanadrink:

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

The posts are not the only problem; it's that there's no filter for fake accounts. This one IP is creating thousands of accounts and there's no check to prevent that. There's also no captcha.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

For a period of time we had an annual membership fee which eliminated 100% of this sort of thing but it was somewhat controversial. Once the membership fee was eliminated, it became open season.

I have no control over admin features like that. The last I checked, there were not any other accounts created by this user but I'll keep checking and hope that our admin blocks them.

EDIT: rats, spoke too soon, more users under a different IP address. :(

Sorry, but I've got to suspend my efforts on this. I just banned the latest round of spammer accounts and will send Jarred another email. This sucks.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

Thanks for all you do, Harvey.
I would not mind a membership fee if we could eliminate problems like that.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

Jarred has said he will look into this problem. Sorry for having to put up with this.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

We all understand. Thank you for your efforts. :08:

I used to be an admin on a huge firearms forum, and we had a ton of mods to oversee things. Each forum had its own group of moderators, plus super moderators that oversaw all forums, and of course, the admins who had full control over everything. I'm sure there enough regulars on here to get a full set of mods to help keep this sort of thing in check.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

A membership fee sucks because that would severely reduce the number of new people joining. Often someone would want to make a quick account just to ask about bananas once, or identify one variety, etc. They won't pay just for that; they'd go somewhere else. Also hardly any forums have membership fees yet they can still combat spam.

You need a captcha for creating accounts, possibly a captcha for creating new threads, and if you want you can require either a certain amount of time to pass or a certain number of posts before new accounts are allowed to create threads.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

Good luck fighting this crap, much appreciated!
I don't understand why people write scripts like this,...what's there to win?

Kind regards,
Remko.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

I agree. What's the prize? What's the goal? Are these users upset at the org? Did they eat a bad banana? Pointless posting!

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

Bunch of idiots

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

I reported one last month for a babysitter! There are all kinds of spam posts on here, but this one looks like a targeted hit. I don't think it's ire against this forum; just a flood that probably hit a lot of forums.

To them, if they make one sale out of it, it is worth the effort. In all honesty, how many of us have actually followed a spam link on email at some point? It does work, and that is why they continue to use it.

I hate captchas; I can't read them half the time. There is an alternative that asks you to answer a simple question, like "What is the Name of This Site" or "2+2=", or "The Cat in the ____".

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

Many thanks! Your work is appreciated.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

Do all of these spam posts have to be deleted one at a time? Or can a user name and all the posts that go with it be deleted all at once? If it's one at a time, that's a lot of work for the moderators.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

I'm able to delete 25 at a time, but I still couldn't keep up unless I could stay at it full time. I'm sure Jarred can figure out another way, he's quite experienced at dealing with such things.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

Thank you harveyc!.....Your effort is appreciated!.....

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

I agree that membership fees suck, but oftentimes they are well worth it.
It might sound a little snarky, but how many times have we seen the same questions asked over and over, even though the answers were already there and just needed a little search. Or PMs with questions that were covered many times before or would have been interesting to other forum members. Bottom line, some forums just burn themselves out by letting new people in without limitations, subsequently leading to lower quality questions, answers and discussions. I would hate to see that happen to bananas.org.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

Thanks to CraigSS who translated the characters and determined that this is advertising Cambodian casinos. :2182:

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

What a bummer. I noticed it not long after it started and thought maybe I could try and delete some and ban the users, but as Harvey stated, the extent is way too extreme, and it's kind of pointless until we can figure out how to stop it from happening.

Re: Notice Regarding Spam Posts
 

It's a drastic measure, but you can check the IP addresses and ban the entire slate until you set up a checkpoint like Captchas.

For example, if you determine they're all coming from Yahoo accounts, block all new accounts with Yahoo addresses for the next few days until you can get it under control. It's drastic, but temporary.