Spam issues

Spam issues

Old forum URL: forums.lhotka.net/forums/t/12396.aspx


RockfordLhotka posted on Tuesday, February 25, 2014

As you've probably noticed, we've had a major spam attack over the past few weeks. I've tried a number of things to address this, and I _think_ I finally have some sort of solution.

I've set the forum so all new users are moderated, so any posts they make won't appear without approval. This is a serious pain for new users, but it also means spammers can't just join and post.

The software the spammers are using is pretty sophisticated though, and it has apparently been creating fake users for a long time, then days or weeks later the software returns and uses those accounts to post spam. As that happens I'm banning those users.

Eventually all the spambot-created fake users will be banned, and all new users will be moderated, so the spam should diminish quite a bit.

If you ARE a new user, and are a real person, just make a real post (real question, or real answer to a question) and as I moderate the posts and see something valid I'll mark your user as not moderated.

Hopefully this helps the spam problem.

skagen00 replied on Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Doesn't seem to be working so well

RockfordLhotka replied on Wednesday, March 05, 2014

No kidding...

The moderation feature of this software must not work, or at least not work as one would expect.

I might have to get some other (more modern) forum software and start over :(

RockfordLhotka replied on Wednesday, March 05, 2014

I've tweaked some of the spam rules for posts - maybe that'll help some.

ajj3085 replied on Wednesday, March 05, 2014

RockfordLhotka

I've tweaked some of the spam rules for posts - maybe that'll help some.

I was emailed about posts awaiting moderation.  all but one was spam so I deleted.  one was from a user that's been here a few months at least.

RockfordLhotka replied on Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Thank you Andy.

I don't think you need to delete the spam posts, they'll automatically be deleted after a few days if they aren't approved.

ajj3085 replied on Thursday, March 06, 2014

Oh ok, didn't know.

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