Spam O Rama Lately
 

Any moderators out there? Any of ya noticed how this forum is being hit with a lot of spam lately??? Can't something be done???

Actually, I think what mods there are out there haven't been doing too bad in terms of cleaning things up. I've seen spam threads deleted fairly quickly after I've reported them and presumably people are having their accounts shut down too.

Apart from Mark and perhaps Mike, I don't think there are any other active mods out there keeping a check on this place. (Kudos to Mark, btw!)

Indead, there's some work to do !

Hmm - I see what you mean - three spams reported within the last few minutes. That's almost more spam postings than real postings for us!

I think maybe the registering for an account is perhaps a little easy. All you have to do is fill in a form, fire off to an email account and activate via the email account. That can be fairly easy to automate if you know what you're doing. Maybe this place needs one of those weirdy text things that computers can't read to stop bots from registering?

Yep ... I'm removing the posts and banning the accounts, but new ones are popping up almost as fast as I can remove them.

I run another website (a motorcycle club for those interested) and we also get plagued with hacking attempts and spam posters. The biggest problem is that all that can be done is to delete the posts, ban the accounts and move on...

... almost makes me wonder why we bother.... :headbang:

your work is very much appreciated Mark. Thanks !

:beer:

Don't worry ... wasn't having a rant at anyone in particular ... just the scum/scammers that come along with nothing better to do than ruin it for everyone else...

:angery: :angery:

Just wondering - is there any way of vetting new members so they can't post links to their porn/viagra sites? Maybe this is a way to cut down on the spammers? Or perhaps one of those letters on a wiggly background kind of things for each posting?

Okay, that's about 10 spams reported as of this morning.....again, I may make my point in disallowing newbies to post links until they hit a certain post count just so we know they're genuine or implementing a wiggly background letters thingy for authentication on postings to stop bots. Again, I'd also like to make the point - where are all our mods (with the exception of Mark)

I totally support your idea !:angery:
I'm not sure wheter the forum software would allow such criteriums to be placed though.

I just made my monthly visit to our much heavier populated sister-site of SimplyMaya. It appears that they're having much the same problem over there. From what I gather from the spam thread, there is going to be a software solution put in place a la the wiggly letters when signing up/posting (don't know which) but we're going to have to wait for it.

Good thing too, there's about three times as much spam these days as legitimate posts. So its still a case of watch this space, and again, thanks to the admins for dealing with the spam whenever it gets reported. They must have as much of a fun time with it as we are.

Incidentally, SimplyMaya also had some spam coming through that contained a link that was frying people's systems in one way or another. So if you do feel tempted to click on one of the spam links, its probably wisest not to. If you need to see Shakira nude or Britney's latest boob-job then google image search would probably do a better job than an untrusted link from someone you don't know.

Maya now has a anti pot-spammer in place (enter letters/numbers on registering) which seems to be working.

In the next few days Lightwave and Max will be getting the same and hopefully that should kill it dead.

In the meantime let dave or tubby know and we will get rid of it asap.

Sorry guys, this spam thing is really really pissing me off. I can no longer find legitimate posts amongst all the spam and I'm really getting hacked off with spending so much time reporting spam. I'll be back once the whole spam problem is cleared up and systems are in place to prevent this. But personally, when the entire postings to the forum are made up of porn spams, its just not a place I want to be visiting any more.

Ok we tested out a new reg system at simplymaya.com that seems to have goten rid of the spam. The system has now been put in place here so hopefully that will fix it :)

David

Cheers for that, David - it certainly seems to have cut out the casual spammer so far.

BTW - your Private Message box is full. I cannot currently reply to your last PM. ;)