The latest spam abuse

[Jozanny]

Chris,

If there is a way you could actually block the spam account holders from opening new accounts, that might be a good idea. I am ashamed to admit it, but Poets & Writers was able to prevent me from having any access to their board in 2002, and if they could do it then with my personal information and my cookies, I am sure you can do it to the spammers creating these accounts. It saddens me to see what they're doing to the sub-forums.

[Janine]

Oh my gosh! There is at least 30 on here today...it is clogging up the whole list of threads. I can't find anything I normally look at. These are getting very chronic lately. One is the same person repeating about 25 times.

[Scheherazade]

We are doing our best to deal with spammers but sometimes they have too much fun before a moderator can get to them.

To be able to block a person altogether means that their IP needs to be banned, which causes further problems:
- Other people using this same IP might get blocked as well.

- On the internet it takes literally 10 seconds to find an alternate IP to redirect one's IP so once an IP is blocked, they can go and get another IP and carry on spamming.

Having said that, we are always trying to find ways of reducing spam (like no PM facility for new members etc).

One way of reducing spam traffic is ignoring and not posting in those threads because once they are activated, those threads attract more spammers.

[Haunted]

Those using dynamic IPs are impossible to pinpoint.

[papayahed]

It does help if those spam posts are reported, once reported email notifications are sent to all the mods. A post can be reported by clicking the little triangle with the ! icon.












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[Maryd.]

It does help if those spam posts are reported, once reported email notifications are sent to all the mods. A post can be reported by clicking the little triangle with the ! icon.












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Thanks for ^ info re: reporting. Sometimes I see these posts and am not sure what to do. Now I know.:thumbs_up

[Janine]

It does help if those spam posts are reported, once reported email notifications are sent to all the mods. A post can be reported by clicking the little triangle with the ! icon.

Oh, that's good to know, papayahed. Thank for suggesting it. I always feel so helpless when I see this sort of invasion. Now this would make for an effective way to help out. Sorry, Scher....I did post today in one thread of a spammer who got overlooked; I didn't know it further delayed the process. Next time I will be clicking on that little alert triangle.

Wow, I feel effective...I just used that button....it worked perfectly!

[Admin]

The one thing I could do is something like... block all IPs of people from Russia.

90% of Russian traffic is spam... but the 10% that are real people might be miffed.

[Admin]

I just added a harder gate question for new user registrations.

[Janine]

Admin, I am glad to see you are doing something more to help close down these spammers. I did as the mods suggested and have been trying when I spot it to alert them by using the triangular spam button. I have a question; if someone new joins and their first post has a link to something (such as their novel) which they are selling, isn't that also considered a form of spam? It seems to me a sneaky way to sneak spam in.

[Admin]

Yes, self promotion is spam.

If someone wrote a novel they can promote it in their signature, but that is it.

[Janine]

Thanks,Admin. I did report that last night. I saw Logos' post and she mentioned not clicking on links they would post, so I figured this fit the category.