Spam!

Sadly, you don't see the half of it.

 

We have one real person who is banned, keeps logging in and trying to create some spam in the malware forum. He logs in two or three times a day and of course never can post. But he keeps at it!! roflmao

 

No augie, not one banned member. It was just an example of a banned member who just can't take a hint!! I just got on a minute ago and have already deleted 4 spammers. :major

 

Most times we just delete the account. But if they are persistent, then we will IP ban or just ban the user name. Depends on how tenacious they want to be. :major

 

No, we would prefer not to ban a whole IP range. But there has been one persistent bot or person that keeps creating multiple user profiles over and over that has made us ban a few IP addy's just to stop his crap. That's a rare occurrence, thankfully.

 

Problem is for every block we try they do end up getting around it sadly, and more sadly is that to pre-empt stopping spam it takes us time to manually review the new accounts and try and use the techniques we have to spot spammers to delete them before they spam as most open an account and leave it for a week or so, then spam.

We in reality dont have a lot live on the forum as most I see in reports (say I get 20 email report a posts, 3-6 are of same spammer) are the same spammer, its a pain to make sure we have deleted any live threads from the moderated ones.

To block a vast amount of spam we would be blocking huge IP ranges or countries and many of those we know are from legit members so its a fine line, and keep on reporting them, unless you wish to do my admin job here and go through 100s of new members a week and posts to weed out spammers as well as the ones caught in the filter.

But in the end we are a forum that's got less spam and live in post/thread spam than the majority of other forums and that's down to you folks and the admin/mod team being on top of this, so keep it up as I know I cannot be everywhere so rely on report a posts.

 

Its a PITA, as i'm only 50 new members in and I have deleted 20 spammers from known user/email/IP's and its a never ending task and TBH its in the main holding me back from actually answering legit tech questions at times.

We need a better spam filter or signup routine, dont ask me what as I dont know or the options I have would need new members jumping through hoops in essence, is that a bad option though.

 

Yeah on high profile site and the awaiting authorization is not going to happen as I know Tim will defo not go for that option and for me it would need admins mods on 24/7 to action this immediately and directly with a new member signup.

Not an easy fix my friend, I'm always mulling a fix to this that's user friendly but spammer not.

 

Thanks Bill and yeah its a PITA task but worthy none the less as to keep a forum spam free or as free as possible is good in my book, gives new members then impression "we care" about security of our members.

Cheers on the welcome back, well without going in depth my missing few months have been a combination of crappy virrii from work (never work in a hospital you end up sicker than patients!) and the work load, which has been tough of late, multiple projects that need my attention, hopefully they are now stable and will allow me more time on the net.

I have been in the background deleting spammers and looking at report a posts each week, but mass posting has been limited until yesterday and today...... is there anyone I need to ban Bill (not you mind) ???? :-D:major