Spam

[HgA1C]

Is it possible to force a manual approval process on whatever country these spammer are coming from? Or possibly increase the difficulty of the questions asked at registration to demonstrate language (English) competency? Possibly close registration during certain hours of the day?

Any fix could be temporary until the spammers stop their attempts to register. The spam is happening at high volumes each day at around the same times. It is making it undesirable to help new vapers in the new member forum during these times.

 

[rolygate]

As an experiment, the Captcha was removed from the signup process. Turned out to be a mistake

It's being replaced [edit - it was already replaced]. We apologise for the spam and obscenities etc being posted.

Not sure what's happening to allow all the spam through, but it looks as if some software changes were made to change one thing, and the knock-on effect was that it changed something else: spam blocking. We'll fix it soon, with luck.

 

[Katya]

Thanks, Roly. Last week or so was really bad...

 

[Cullin Kin]

Last night was really bad... 20 threads or so advertising an escort service flooded the new members forum.

Thanks for your hard work rolygate! Besides last night, I really haven't noticed too much since I joined.

 

[rolygate]

It looks as if they may have moved from bot registrations to a manual sign-up, then the bot gets switched in to post loads of rubbish. We can't set a flood block (a max number of posts per 5 minutes or whatever) as that stops people posting in chat threads where they do quick-fire posts.

No doubt we'll find some way of fixing it...

 

[retired1]

I prefer the nuke method myself. Block the entire country via iptables.

 

[Katya]

It looks as if they may have moved from bot registrations to a manual sign-up, then the bot gets switched in to post loads of rubbish. We can't set a flood block (a max number of posts per 5 minutes or whatever) as that stops people posting in chat threads where they do quick-fire posts.

No doubt we'll find some way of fixing it...

Roly, we're being inundated tonight. I can't even find any new members looking for help--15 pages of spam in NM... Help!

 

[Norrin]

It looks as if they may have moved from bot registrations to a manual sign-up, then the bot gets switched in to post loads of rubbish. We can't set a flood block (a max number of posts per 5 minutes or whatever) as that stops people posting in chat threads where they do quick-fire posts.

No doubt we'll find some way of fixing it...

Could you not limit the amount of threads that they can make or change the rules so that people have to post X number of posts before they can even make a thread in NM. I know it's hard to find a compromise that stops the spammers without stopping real people posting but the amount of spam lately is going to make it really hard for new users anyway.

 

[ambition]

Here's an idea.

How about enlisting the help of the forum members by creating a peer moderation system where is a particular user receives a set number of spam reports against them then the offending post (and all other posts from that point forward) are sandboxed and temporarily removed from the view of anyone except the original poster pending review from a mod/admin.

If it passes the review, threads and posts go live, if not, they are all nuked (or something in between)

edit to add:
As I understand it, if 10 users all report a particular post, then our mods are effectively getting spammed by spam reports.

Maybe this could be implemented in such a way that mods are not bothered with a flood of individual spam reports, but are presented with a simpler report summary showing the offending username and some key numbers that can be used to calculate a "spam score".

Yes, this will require some dev and at least another database table. Might be worth looking into though

 

[rolygate]

Yes, we need to do something fast!

There are some software changes going on at the moment that mean spam-blocking has been compromised. We will get a fix in place soon.

 

[ambition]

Yes, we need to do something fast!

There are some software changes going on at the moment that mean spam-blocking has been compromised. We will get a fix in place soon.

Oh I see, the lock is still there but the door is temporarily missing.
Good luck with that

 

[tazzle]

Aw dang, I came to ECF to see if there were any magical spells that could help me with my Love, Divorce, Money, Work, Childe (sic), and all I see are these stinking posts about vaping!

J/K! Thanks for the major MAJOR cleanup!

 

[classwife]

^^^


HAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa !!!!

 

[Frenchfry1942]

I never see spam. I do say that I only go to "What's New". Well, I do search a good bit. By going only to the "What's New", do I miss posts?

 

[Nibs91]

I never see spam. I do say that I only go to "What's New". Well, I do search a good bit. By going only to the "What's New", do I miss posts?

Last night there were dozens of spam posts from multiple "members" in the new members forum. It was terribly annoying.

I don't recall when I registered if there was a captcha system in place. That supposedly helps filter spam members.

 

[twgbonehead]

I never see spam. I do say that I only go to "What's New". Well, I do search a good bit. By going only to the "What's New", do I miss posts?

They definitely come in bursts, usually during the night.

If you don't go onto ECF until, say 9AM, they're usually all deleted by then.

ETA: And since you're in Arizona, a couple hours earlier.

 

[twgbonehead]

Here's an idea.

How about enlisting the help of the forum members by creating a peer moderation system where is a particular user receives a set number of spam reports against them then the offending post (and all other posts from that point forward) are sandboxed and temporarily removed from the view of anyone except the original poster pending review from a mod/admin.

If it passes the review, threads and posts go live, if not, they are all nuked (or something in between)

edit to add:
As I understand it, if 10 users all report a particular post, then our mods are effectively getting spammed by spam reports.

Maybe this could be implemented in such a way that mods are not bothered with a flood of individual spam reports, but are presented with a simpler report summary showing the offending username and some key numbers that can be used to calculate a "spam score".

Yes, this will require some dev and at least another database table. Might be worth looking into though

It might be simpler than that.

If you find that you can't navigate NM without all the spam, just "ignore" the spammers. (View their profile and click on "add to ignore list").

Then, ECF could use some rule like "new_member && (num_ignores>=10) to automatically quarantine them.

This would allow ECF members to help clean out the site (and when you've blocked all the spammers, you ought to be able to see the real messages even before the spam gets deleted.....)

 

[retired1]

The problem with something like that is there are those who would then use it to block/ban those they don't like.

Moderation by those who aren't part of the staff isn't going to happen.

 

[classwife]

I love the consideration for staff about "spamming us with spam reports"
Sometimes that happens !


You guys are awesome !



A great tip...once you have reported one thread from a spammer...you don't need to report all of them
Once a thread (for each spammer) gets reported we will get all of their threads.