What's going on with all this spam?
- Thread starter SRKing783
- Start date
Plus the spammers are almost always ahead of the message board software engineers and administrators.
It is rare (but it has happened) that an existing forum users account is hacked so virtually all spam comes from new "guest" accounts.
What to do? Do we impose severe restrictions on guest users? Such as ...
My mobile phone (cell phone) service provider has implemented a SPAM filter on all incoming text and phone calls. They have thrown a lot of resources and money at the problem and there has been a noticeable drop in spam messages and calls. But it is still not perfect and some still get through.
My thoughts.
It is rare (but it has happened) that an existing forum users account is hacked so virtually all spam comes from new "guest" accounts.
What to do? Do we impose severe restrictions on guest users? Such as ...
- Delaying their posts until the contents of the posts have been vetted (there are plenty of loopholes in that and who would want the job)?
- Only allow users who have a legitimate copy of Trainz to post (that means that potential purchasers cannot ask questions and it may not be possible with the forum software)
- ...and so on
My mobile phone (cell phone) service provider has implemented a SPAM filter on all incoming text and phone calls. They have thrown a lot of resources and money at the problem and there has been a noticeable drop in spam messages and calls. But it is still not perfect and some still get through.
My thoughts.
I was getting a series of texts from the post office that my package was in the warehouse but needed an accurate address. But the country code was 44, and I don't think the US Post Office operates in the UK, so that was obvious. Fortunately my phone software caught them and sent them immediately to SPAM. The actual phone number changed every time, so blocking the number did not help much. The last one I got came from some even more unlikely country somewhere. What a waste of time and resources.
johnwhelan
Well-known member
But a filter that checks if the user is new and the message has an html link embedded in it?
Thoughts
Thanks John
Sounds very logical but it will depend on whether the forum software is capable of doing that. Plus there have been "pre-spam" posts made in the forum without any HTML links. These act as placeholders that the spammer is able to later edit to add the missing links.
Click the XenForo link at the very very bottom of page then on XenForo click "Features" and then "Spam." I've operated 3 forums in past lives. Some of the better features are usually options that you have to pay extra for.. (well, now they are most likely monthly subscriptions!)
Last edited:
Let me share some insights related to this conversation:
And just for those of you who didn't know: I have been moderator on this forum since August 2015 (though I took a year off somewhere).
The current forum software is an upgrade over the previous if it comes to moderator tools and spam catching. You see a lot of spam lately, but we moderators see more of it. The current forum software moves a lot of shit it recognizes into the "approval queue". Yes, that same queue your posts end up in when you post something in the Suggestions Boxcar... which is also the reason I have to check it as ignoring it means ignoring the 1% of the posts in that queue that should not be deleted.
We do our best to clean the spam.
The best thing all of you can do is report the spam.
Note that there is NO need to post a reply with "spam reported".
I would actually prefer you don't do so (unless it is spam hidden inside an existing topic to prevent others from replying to it) as that bumps the spam topic and it could trigger the poster that there is action on his spam (so it didn't get caught in a spam filter) and spam more at a later moment.
The worst thing you can do it quote a spam post when posting a "spam reported" post and leave the spam links inside of it; yes, I see those too often. Okay, the very worst thing you can do is break a rule of the CoC, but the second worst thing... I think you get it.
So:
Please just use that "Report" button. Don't be afraid we moderators get a hundreds emails about the same topic; they all get nicely listed as one report.
And if the same user is posting a lot of the same or really similar spam topics, reporting one is good enough; saves you from having to report 20+ topics and saves me having to close 20+ cases for the same spammer. Just add a note that he has posted a lot more spam and I will check his recent posts.
Let me take this opportunity to say thank you to all those people who have already been using that report function the last few months (or that tiny triangle on the previous forum). It helps a lot as we rarely see all of it without you pointing it out. Again: Thank you.
And just for those of you who didn't know: I have been moderator on this forum since August 2015 (though I took a year off somewhere).
The current forum software is an upgrade over the previous if it comes to moderator tools and spam catching. You see a lot of spam lately, but we moderators see more of it. The current forum software moves a lot of shit it recognizes into the "approval queue". Yes, that same queue your posts end up in when you post something in the Suggestions Boxcar... which is also the reason I have to check it as ignoring it means ignoring the 1% of the posts in that queue that should not be deleted.
We do our best to clean the spam.
The best thing all of you can do is report the spam.
Note that there is NO need to post a reply with "spam reported".
I would actually prefer you don't do so (unless it is spam hidden inside an existing topic to prevent others from replying to it) as that bumps the spam topic and it could trigger the poster that there is action on his spam (so it didn't get caught in a spam filter) and spam more at a later moment.
The worst thing you can do it quote a spam post when posting a "spam reported" post and leave the spam links inside of it; yes, I see those too often. Okay, the very worst thing you can do is break a rule of the CoC, but the second worst thing... I think you get it.
So:
Please just use that "Report" button. Don't be afraid we moderators get a hundreds emails about the same topic; they all get nicely listed as one report.
And if the same user is posting a lot of the same or really similar spam topics, reporting one is good enough; saves you from having to report 20+ topics and saves me having to close 20+ cases for the same spammer. Just add a note that he has posted a lot more spam and I will check his recent posts.
Let me take this opportunity to say thank you to all those people who have already been using that report function the last few months (or that tiny triangle on the previous forum). It helps a lot as we rarely see all of it without you pointing it out. Again: Thank you.
Edit: And yes, again, we moderator are all volunteers, except Zec but he isn't technically a moderator.
UnionPacificFan1005
ignore user, GTW foamer
I had no idea that responding to those actually made the spam worse. Thanks for the heads up!
Can confirm, accidentally opened up a spam email in my junk inbox one day trying to delete it on my phone, now I get so many spam emails. Granted they go straight to junk but it's still spam. Didn't know something like that could work on the forums though...but thanks for letting us know