SPAM

Jeni Nielsen · Post by **Jeni Nielsen** » Sun May 14, 2006 7:14 am

Ok, here's the deal.

We all know this forum (the general forum specifically) gets spam topics from time to time. Here's what you can do to help.

1) Do not respond to the spam topic. DO NOT RESPOND. It just encourages the little bastards... well I don't know that for a fact, but I feel much better about deleting one single spam topic than one that has a ton of responses to it.

2) You can PM me with the link to the page that the topic is on, and I will delete it right away. This is not necessary since I delete all spam topics I see when I check the forum. I'm here about once a day, so it will get done.

EDIT:

3) recently the spambots have started asking questions! If you see someone asking a general, usually one sentence, question like "where did you find that?" or "how do I post images in this forum" look at the post count and SN. If the post-count is lower than 2 it's probably a bot. If the SN is something weird like "datingservices2" it's also probably a bot.

Don't respond and I'll delete the topic.

Just know that I am trying to deal with these as they show up. As Jeff has already said, he's doing what he can on his end.

Thanks for following the rules.

EDIT #2

I think it's pretty obvious, but also remember, don't click on the links of any spambot no matter how curious you are. You will get a trojan on your computer and then YOU will be helping those spambots spam our forum. Thanks.

Epiphany · Post by **Epiphany** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 1:22 pm

My god this site gets hit a lot by spammers.
Personally I'm not interested in Britney Naked or Clothed.

Jeni Nielsen · Post by **Jeni Nielsen** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 11:31 am

Epiphany wrote:My god this site gets hit a lot by spammers.
Personally I'm not interested in Britney Naked or Clothed.

As i've said I'm doing my best. Please trust me that I come here and delete as much spam as I see every day at least once.

Also if you do want to PM me about it, feel free to include links to the posts you're referring to so that I can delete them faster.

Lightice · Post by **Lightice** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 2:20 pm

I'm starting to feel that we should abandon this board and restart the whole thing. This amount of spam just can't be controlled efficently, any more. It's making this place seriously harder to deal with. I have never seen so many spambots in one board - either there is a Trojan somewhere or the software itself is faulty.

Jeni Nielsen · Post by **Jeni Nielsen** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 6:41 pm

Lightice wrote:I'm starting to feel that we should abandon this board and restart the whole thing. This amount of spam just can't be controlled efficently, any more. It's making this place seriously harder to deal with. I have never seen so many spambots in one board - either there is a Trojan somewhere or the software itself is faulty.

I agree. I frequent another forum where this software is being used, and the spam is awful. In fact we're being spammed by exactly the same spambots they're being spammed by, but until I hear word from Jeff there's nothing I can do to change or correct the problem. I'd love to moderate a forum with less spam, but since Jeff seems to have sort of left me in charge with no way of doing anything, this is all I can do for now.

Sorry.

Epiphany · Post by **Epiphany** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 6:47 pm

I agree. I frequent another forum where this software is being used, and the spam is awful. In fact we're being spammed by exactly the same spambots they're being spammed by, but until I hear word from Jeff there's nothing I can do to change or correct the problem. I'd love to moderate a forum with less spam, but since Jeff seems to have sort of left me in charge with no way of doing anything, this is all I can do for now.

Sorry.[/quote]

No one here is blaming you. We can see your fighting an uphill battle.

Lightice · Post by **Lightice** » Sun Dec 24, 2006 9:19 am

Yeah, this is definately not your fault. I guess you've already notified Jeff but you might press the issue with him - unless he wants a deserted forum inhabited only by spambots, he should be doing something to change the software and soon.

Jeni Nielsen · Post by **Jeni Nielsen** » Sun Dec 24, 2006 10:15 am

Lightice wrote:Yeah, this is definately not your fault. I guess you've already notified Jeff but you might press the issue with him - unless he wants a deserted forum inhabited only by spambots, he should be doing something to change the software and soon.

Then here's what I suggest. email Jeff at webmaster@neomythos.com and tell him your concerns. I feel like the more people we can get to email him about this the better. As far as I know that's the best way to reach him. He hasn't been responding to my PMs so I guess he doesn't come around here much anyhow.

I appreciate the fact that you guys aren't blaming me for this stuff. Deleting spam is thankless work and I'm sort of getting fed up with it.
I'm pretty much computer dumb when it comes to this sort of stuff, so unless Jeff does something I do worry about the future of this forum. Anyhow I definitely WON'T abandon this place because of spam, but you're right that it is ridiculous.

Marf · Post by **Marf** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 1:08 pm

The spam is all bot generated, its not a human being posting or registering.

What you need to do is have the admins/moderators activate the users manually rather than have the users do it themselves with the link in the automated e-mail.

You can often see a trend and start to spot the spammers and then not activate them.

Couple this with requiring users to provide a location, be it real or not gives you another way to spot bot registrations, since they generally only fill in the fields required to submit the form, i.e. username, e-mail, and the passwords.

We do this on a coupla forums I'm admin/mod for.

HTH.

Epiphany · Post by **Epiphany** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 2:43 pm

based on the amount of posts just posted by Abermo42. I would agree with Marf. I would have been willing to take a few extra steps to register and the wait for you to activate it.

Jeni Nielsen · Post by **Jeni Nielsen** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:18 pm

It's only admins that can approve people for the forum or at least I'd have to wait for Jeff to turn on the feature that lets me approve people. I've been aware of the fact that this is a possible solution to the problem (and I may ask Jeff to give me admin status eventually), but that's still something I have no control over as a lowly moderator.

Marf · Post by **Marf** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:52 am

On the forums I help out on the new registration notification e-mails are sent to all mods and admins on the forum, these e-mails contain the link to activate thenew user, but your right Jeni the admin(s) would need to make some changes to enable this.

It's easily sorted

Jeni Nielsen · Post by **Jeni Nielsen** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 9:04 pm

I haven't started yet, but tomorrow I'm going to start locking topics that are over two weeks old. If you feel like I've locked a topic that deserves to stay open feel free to let me know through PM. I feel like this is one stopgap measure I can impliment until Jeff can do something about the forum software.

mrtodd · Post by **mrtodd** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:47 am

do you get alot of spam on this forum then?? ive only been using the site a few days and there have been at least 3 from different bots or whatever...

Jeni Nielsen · Post by **Jeni Nielsen** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 8:11 am

mrtodd wrote:do you get alot of spam on this forum then?? ive only been using the site a few days and there have been at least 3 from different bots or whatever...

Yeah this site gets more spam than any I've ever been on. I'm really trying to delete as much as possible, but I'm very overwhelmed. Sorry.

in the shell

SPAM

SPAM

Note about locking topics.