What's with all the spam post recently?

[hiawathamr]

Title says everything, so what's up with all the spams? Like come on...

This is a Trainz forum, not an advertising forum...

 

[pware]

These people don't care what type of forum it is - Trainz, Cars, Baby Care, Health, News, etc. I suspect they get paid by the number of posts they make or by the number of people who actually access the links they provide.

It is easy to register for an ID to the Trainz forums, no proof of purchase is required - otherwise how would new users get onto the forum to register? This leaves us open to limited exploitation by these "individuals" but they can only post in the General forum, or so I believe.

Fortunately, the moderators usually wipe them out after a very short period - but it is like a game of whack-a-mole.

 

[jawbreakerlvl.20]

Makes sense by a lot.

 

[TimLee_TW]

Not only our forum being attack, even the AutoDesk forum.
If you search those url in google, it will appear a lot of result appear recently.
I guess those bad guy use spambot rather than doing this manually.

 

[pware]

You need some random feature, such as a Captcha, to slow them down when they log in to the forum for the first time to get a username and a password. But Captcha's, at least at the end that I can easily handle, are now often easily defeated by AI software (but Alister still can't Navigate To or Navigate Via them).

 

[euromodeller]

Many years back I was a moderator on a wholesale business forum, the Chinese were so intent on getting their wholesale websites into the UK traders sight so they did it by spamming the forum.
At the height I was deleting hundreds of posts a week and as soon as I deleted a post or account, along came another one, then one day one of the spammers decided to pay for advertising space and as a result his (legitimate) business grew, soon more Chinese were paying for adverts. I also learned that the advertisers would 'talk' to the spammers, the spam practically stopped

 

[boleyd]

Some of these spammers are making a profit. All you need is a legit Trainz customer to tweet the "interesting" link and the fun begins. The lack of educated people on the web makes it an extremely ripe area to spam a thousand sites, get thru on 10 sites, have five users tweet the spammers link/advert and the poison spreads. It worked perfectly in the USA elections. The under informed public, and some on here, are ripe to spread an infection simply because they fail to recognize a scam. A free trip to Vegas. Hmmm, wonder if that is legit? "hey joe/joan take a look at this!"
Dick

 

[oknotsen]

Please report spam and after that just ignore it

Spam comes in waves. Depending on the company that is supplying the forum software and the company using it, it can take between a few hours and a few months before an adjustment to the spam filter is implemented. Till that time the cleaning is up to a group of people, usually volunteers, that either spot it or get notified about it.

When it comes to spam posted on this forum, there are roughly 3 categories of actions: Stupid, neutral and helpful.

• Stupid:
  • Click on the links supplied; it is spam, remember? God knows what you find or end up infesting your PC with.
  • Try and have a "discussion" with the spammer (by posting a reply with questions or "friendly suggestions" or even sending them a PM); it will only promote the spam by keeping it high in the list.
• Neutral:
  • Ignore it. They do the same with your replies or PMs.
• Helpful:
  • Click on the tiny triangle underneath the post and report it as spam. That way all moderators and administrators get an email about the topic and can take action.

A few notes:

• All moderators (with the exception of Zec, who I think technically is admin) are volunteers. It can take some time before we respond as we have jobs and a life and sometimes actually sleep (in case you wonder why I rarely respond to reports or reply to PM between 1 and 7 am CET).
• I personally have mixed feeling about replying to spam telling people you reported it. Though it is a friendly gesture towards the rest of the forum, it does "bump" the spam to the top and in some rare occasions people forgot to actually send the report. I know; if 10 people report something all moderators get 10 emails, but I personally rather have 10 emails that I can delete in 2 seconds then finding spam bumped with replies... But that is of course personal; other moderators might have different opinions.

So, in conclusion:
Please report spam and after that just ignore it.

 

[KenGreen]

Thanks
I together with many more Trainzers never realised that there was a triangle there let alone know what it's for. Very useful post.

Ken

 

[slenderman8888]

a good solution to stop the spammer is if all these were done by the same individual you could try banning his/her IP address from accessing the forums to check if it was the same person look at 2 of the recent spam messages and the accounts that posted them and if you can see them look at the IP address they were posted from and if they are the same then it is the same person and if posible that IP could be blocked

 

[Vern]

Moderated posting for the first (say) 5 or 6 on a new user's posts would also reduce the instances.

 

[clam1952]

a good solution to stop the spammer is if all these were done by the same individual you could try banning his/her IP address from accessing the forums to check if it was the same person look at 2 of the recent spam messages and the accounts that posted them and if you can see them look at the IP address they were posted from and if they are the same then it is the same person and if posible that IP could be blocked

Pointless exercise if like most of the UK you are on a dynamic IP address, just reboot the router and you get a new IP, not to mention some innocent party gets their IP blocked if they get assigned the blocked one.

I'm with Vern on moderator approved posts for the first few posts, however that would probably create more work for the mods and frustration for a new poster with an issue having to wait one two or three or more days for approval as happens on one Train sim forum.

 

[Richarde57]

Thanks
I together with many more Trainzers never realised that there was a triangle there let alone know what it's for. Very useful post.

Ken

Maybe they should make a text "Report this post" next to it.
All icons have a text, why this one not?

☼

 

[clam1952]

The ! is the standard report icon for a vBulletin forum, If you hover the cursor over it, it actually says report this post. As I've seen red ones and yellow ones on vBulletin forums, I assume the colour can be changed which could I suppose help.

 

[Vern]

I'm with Vern on moderator approved posts for the first few posts, however that would probably create more work for the mods and frustration for a new poster with an issue having to wait one two or three or more days for approval as happens on one Train sim forum.

Thanks Malc! I recently had to do that when I joined the Frontier Development forum (for Elite Dangerous) and while there was an element of inconvenience it keeps the spam down. Any genuine user who wants to be part of the community should understand the need anyway. Perhaps a halfway house would be to moderate any new user who signs up without a registered copy of Trainz against their username.

 

[HiBaller]

The ! is the standard report icon for a vBulletin forum, If you hover the cursor over it, it actually says report this post. As I've seen red ones and yellow ones on vBulletin forums, I assume the colour can be changed which could I suppose help.

I agree, Malc. If the triangle color (or colour) was changed to yellow or red it would be much more eye-catching. I've used it on occasion so I know where it is.

Bill