Reporting Spam

Susan~S · Oct 11, 2014

I like reporting spam but I don't want to "spam" the mods if I am doing this all wrong.

Would you rather I report just one thread per spammer, or do you like getting multiple reports per spammer (if they have multiple threads.

twgbonehead · Oct 11, 2014

I only think you need to report one. The mods will go look at the user's profile, and delete their threads en-masse.

retired1 · Oct 11, 2014

It's kind of a double edged sword, but yes, we'd appreciate it if you reported the individual once as we do nuke all posts/threads made by the spammers.

classwife · Oct 12, 2014

And the past few days - shew !

THANK YOU ALL for your help too !

Rickajho · Oct 12, 2014

When it gets nutso like early this morning and I see none of you guys/gals are around to pounce, I have just been submitting one report for each account they open, figuring you were gonna do the obvious with all the posts once you were aware of the accounts in question.
:2c:

Katya · Oct 12, 2014

Rickajho said:
When it gets nutso like early this morning and I see none of you guys/gals are around to pounce, I have just been submitting one report for each account they open, figuring you were gonna do the obvious with all the posts once you were aware of the accounts in question.

Same here.

I also noticed that Rick lets others know when he reports a spammer. I started doing the same thing. When I see that a spammer has been reported, I don't bother. Thanks Rick!

Dear mods--I feel your pain. Last night was the worst--I've never seen anything like that before....

Rickajho · Oct 12, 2014

Katya said:
Same here.

I also noticed that Rick lets others know when he reports a spammer. I started doing the same thing. When I see that a spammer has been reported, I don't bother. Thanks Rick!

Dear mods--I feel your pain. Last night was the worst--I've never seen anything like that before....

Lol - truth be told I do that for myself, so I'm not wasting time or filing multiple reports for the same account. :blush:

Katya · Oct 12, 2014

Rickajho said:
Lol - truth be told I do that for myself, so I'm not wasting time or filing multiple reports for the same account.

It's a great idea--nevertheless. :toast:

And I love that smiley!

Susan~S · Oct 12, 2014

Sounds like if we all work together we can still keep the mods informed WITHOUT sending them too many duplicate SPAM REPORTS.

Last night was not bad at all. I think there were only two spammers and they didn't run a muck!

classwife · Oct 13, 2014

Katya · Dec 6, 2014

Dear Admin, Moderators!

The spam is out of control in New Members... I know you're aware of the problem, but I'm wondering if some way of controlling it at the point of entry could be devised. When I logged in tonight, I found 8 pages of black magic, marriage problems and penis enlargement threads--all from India. I couldn't even find regular new members threads asking for help...

Thanks.

ETA: The NM forum is practically paralyzed ATM--I've never seen anything like that before.

ambition · Dec 6, 2014

Maiar · Dec 6, 2014

Katya said:
Dear Admin, Moderators!

The spam is out of control in New Members... I know you're aware of the problem, but I'm wondering if some way of controlling it at the point of entry could be devised. When I logged in tonight, I found 8 pages of black magic, marriage problems and penis enlargement threads--all from India. I couldn't even find regular new members threads asking for help...

Thanks.

ETA: The NM forum is practically paralyzed ATM--I've never seen anything like that before.

We have to find out if it's actual people doing it or bots. Bots are easy to stop usually by requiring you to manually copy some text. If it's actual people, which I doubt, then it's harder.

Either way. Those .......s are annoying.

Maiar · Dec 6, 2014

By we, I meant the forums as a whole, I'm not a moderator lol.

Katya · Dec 6, 2014

15 pages of spam in NM... :facepalm:

Katya · Dec 6, 2014

Maiar said:
We have to find out if it's actual people doing it or bots. Bots are easy to stop usually by requiring you to manually copy some text. If it's actual people, which I doubt, then it's harder.

Either way. Those .......s are annoying.

It's complicated, apparently.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/site-feedback-help/612762-spam.html#post14399323

Norrin · Dec 6, 2014

Katya said:
It's complicated, apparently.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/site-feedback-help/612762-spam.html#post14399323

I think we can all appreciate that it's complicated but they need to do something as this is just silly, I usually stick to new posts and even after just checking 1 or 2 threads and maybe responding in one I have 3-4 pages to go through to get back to the last post I might have missed. This is a pain for people who have been here for a while but surely it is far worse for the noobs especially the few who are also new too forums.

ambition · Dec 6, 2014

This is obviously a bot (let loose by a human of course)

Simple bot challenges like turing tests and captcha work fine for simple bots, but there are ways around it for more advanced bots that use captcha completions services.

Captcha completion services can be as simple as outsourcing the task of completing captchas to an offshore company for a few dollars per thousand captchas completed.

A better idea for the devs might be post rate (thread creation) limiting and sandboxing the suspected spammer's username until it is reviewed manually by an admin.
Sandboxing here refers to allowing the spammer to continue to create threads, and see those created threads as if they were live, yet no other user would see those posts until the sandbox review is completed successfully. This fools the spammer into thinking that the bot is still functioning as it should. Of course it is easy to see from another account whether these posts are actually live.

Just my 2c

Edit to add: by the way, the goal of this particular spammer is not to get people on this forum calling the number, it is simply that google indexes this forum often, and these phone numbers will show up as relevant to the associated keywords and ranked higher in searches as they appear on numerous high quality, high authority domains all over the internet.

Taking these down quickly or preventing them from being shown in the first place is exactly what the spammer is hoping won't happen.

DreamWithin · Dec 9, 2014

ambition said:
A better idea for the devs might be post rate (thread creation) limiting and sandboxing the suspected spammer's username until it is reviewed manually by an admin.
Sandboxing here refers to allowing the spammer to continue to create threads, and see those created threads as if they were live, yet no other user would see those posts until the sandbox review is completed successfully. This fools the spammer into thinking that the bot is still functioning as it should. Of course it is easy to see from another account whether these posts are actually live.

It's a sound idea, in principle, but not really viable for ECF. Even if it were just limited to new users, the sheer number of posts that would have to be manually approved would make that process a full-time job by itself

I'm sure they're tweaking our anti-spam measures constantly, so this wave of recent spam will probably subside soon

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