Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Tired of reporting spam

Tired of reporting spam

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violet sin - 9-7-2014 at 11:34

man it has been so bad lately I will log in just to report spam and not even read several times a day, and deff before bed. makes me pretty fraking mad, wanna shove their mouse then keyboard up someones rear! maybe followed by some superglue. and I think some of the posts, based on location, take longer to boot out. the ones in forum matters seem to hover around for a while longer than the rest if I am not mistaken, could just SEEM that way I guess though. ok, not gonna eat up my whole lunch break here, but man would it be nice to just be able to read in peace again.... like we use to when I first came here. I know it seems to come in waves then rescind with time. but it sure is distracting

The Volatile Chemist - 9-7-2014 at 11:38

It would be helpful if more people looked at 'today's posts', that's what I look at most, along w/ subscriptions.

violet sin - 9-7-2014 at 11:43

I spent a week and a half when I first found the forum, and went through each category looking at each thread. so now I pretty much only go to daily posts. unless working on a project, or recent daily posts are boring to my interest. so if spam is present, I see and report it

[Edited on 9-7-2014 by violet sin]

Texium - 15-7-2014 at 10:19

Strange, I just looked at some of the profile pages of the newest "members," and many of them are spammers with no posts that fill their bio section with similar gibberish to the spam posts commonly seen around the forum. Another really weird thing that I noticed from the two newest joiners (from today) was this weird sort of bio, and another one like it from earlier today with even more awful spelling and grammar errors. Not the typical spam. I did not bother to see what youtube video the first one was linking. Probably some advertisement or random crap.

WGTR - 17-7-2014 at 17:50

That was quite a run of spam. That one guy made it up to 34 posts.

TheChemiKid - 17-7-2014 at 17:58

Yeah, it was terrible.

violet sin - 17-7-2014 at 18:13

I stepped on the first 4 I saw, figured it was all one guy so he was gonna get kicked out quickly. something kinda rewarding about being the first to see and report a spam post, lol.

TheChemiKid - 17-7-2014 at 18:14

Yeah, I know that feeling.

violet sin - 21-7-2014 at 02:26

so I have noticed a lot of the spam is for a few brands only. here's my thought:

..1) nike air max (as an example) always buried in the text some where as a link in blue. there are a handful of other brand names as well.
..2) also we know members here aren't posting about these things unless it is here, to bitch, and never as links.
..3) we set limits on how many people it takes to report the thing for auto-deletion, to protect useful information by requiring a trusted members in combination with partially trusted member/s.

wait for it,..
..4) if no real member is posting about nike air max, could we...
......a) get the report button to check for a known name brand, from a list that the mods populated based on past spam?
......b) perhaps type in something like " spam: nike air max " on the report screen and have it auto checked for the a specific word/s?
......c) if you had to be extra convinced, you could have it to check if it had a link with that name,

all in the name of INSTANT death from ONE member, trusted or not

so we could really fight back even late night with few members.

honestly I know nothing of how this would be done, it was just my idea of a way to pinpoint a thread as useless with out allowing loss of good reading. I personally know less than a rock about writing programs like this seems it would take, so may be totally silly question. but if it was possible, it would be nice.
-Violet Sin-

The Volatile Chemist - 23-7-2014 at 06:04

Late night is the worst. I'll be in my bed and spend waaay too much time reporting. I still don't know, am I "trusted"?

kmno4 - 24-7-2014 at 14:53

Quote: Originally posted by The Volatile Chemist

Late night is the worst. I'll be in my bed and spend waaay too much time reporting. I still don't know, am I "trusted"?

Trusted spammer ?
Yes.
By posting craps in idiotic "tired of reporting spam" you and your friends create spam not worst than "buy nike".

All you kids, playing the "reporting spam", act against this forum and make administration more and more lazy.
It is their job, to keep forum clean, not yours

hyfalcon - 24-7-2014 at 16:17

Quote: Originally posted by kmno4

Quote: Originally posted by The Volatile Chemist

Late night is the worst. I'll be in my bed and spend waaay too much time reporting. I still don't know, am I "trusted"?

Wait just a minute there bub. All we are doing is following the guidelines laid down BY the admins/mods.

As for age, do you really want to go there?

[Edited on 25-7-2014 by hyfalcon]

violet sin - 24-7-2014 at 22:16

@kmno4 : gotta ask, what's your deal man?

.....Are you just plain tired of watching the thread pop up on the daily posts, while others attempt to help eliminate spam with out risking losing the good reading you obviously enjoy? Honestly I don't get it. I would think ANY member of science madness would be thrilled to make this a thing of the past, or a minor nuisance at least. It's not the mod's JOB'S to do any thing. Do we even have a revenue stream, are there people drawing paychecks, is there a central office I don't know about? Don't thinks so. this is a community of individuals that want to learn and grow, or are learning/learned, and have the good graces to share with others. As such we are pulling together to mitigate the issue.

.....I also second hyfalcon, in the age component implied. My birthday is on my profile free to view, and though I am neither ancient nor prepubescent, I am definitely at an age in my life to know that calling some one kid, is derogatory in the sense it confers stupidity and childishness. I know people don't go around calling me kid unless they also wanna poke me in the chest tauntingly, which is a very bad idea for them. This is no threat/promise/"you better not", kind of statement I write here. It is more of a, "I see what you are doing there, and I don't like it sir"

.....show some respect to others, and if you don't want to contribute to the spam problem, at least lay off those that do care. No interest in this topic should be equivalent to no comment. Do me a favor while your at it, don't go calling other members spammers because you see no value in their effort. And if you have some beef, feel free to drop me a U2U whenever. I am a very agreeable guy, seeking to make friends not enemies. What ever your deal, drop it or discuss it in an intelligent manner please.

again just my 2¢, I don't speak for any one other than me.
-Violet Sin- 35yo since it matters apparently

hyfalcon - 25-7-2014 at 01:42

As for the age factor. I'll be 53 in less than a month. Still want to call me a kid?

The Volatile Chemist - 26-7-2014 at 11:58

Thanks guys. I just meant on the trusted list of spam reporters. No Idea why you had the outrage...
As for the age factor, I'll be a 'kid for a little while yet, but at least there'll be some younger people still interested in the integrity of the forum in a few years.

violet sin - 26-7-2014 at 13:49

age isn't supposed to matter here. follow the guidelines, like we have, and there should be no headache's. sure with age comes wisdom(some times), but youth can sure have a lot of enthusiasm often lacking otherwise! fresh eye's on old ideas is great. the forum is for every one, so why should it be a problem if everyone cares to help. it's not like we were overflowing the moderators U2U boxes with thousands of useless ideas, just been toying around in hopes of a manageable resolution to the spam. some of the ideas have been used, some just passed on by. no harm no foul.
-Violet Sin-

Texium - 28-7-2014 at 07:13

How about automatically deleting accounts that have over a certain amount of numbers in them? Usually the really aggressive spam accounts (as opposed to the ones that don't actually post) have a lot of numbers in their usernames.

Polverone - 28-7-2014 at 12:09

I added some additional automatic deletion code 13 days ago. Manual spam reports serve as training data for automatic deletion, and accounts that match the automatic deletion criteria are removed without human intervention. I'm not going to explain how it works in public because the spam-zombies behind the keyboards might read my explanation and start working around it faster. In the 13 days since I added the code, I can say that about 17 additional spammers per day have been eliminated without human intervention. All of those deletions were accounts that actually made posts, rather than preemptive deletion of suspiciously-named accounts.

Texium - 28-7-2014 at 12:38

Ah, I see. It did seem like spammers tended to start disappearing faster in the last couple weeks.

Texium - 7-8-2014 at 19:58

Wow, well that automatic deletion thing seems to be working perfectly. I have only seen one spam post since it was implemented, and it no longer existed by the time I hit the report button on it.
The only issue I have is that it still displays the spammer as the last poster in a subforum, which tends to be confusing when checking to see if there are any new posts. It's such a minor cosmetic issue though, if there's no easy solution, it's not something worth fixing.

Brain&Force - 8-8-2014 at 16:00

Please welcome our newest spambot, kjljlkkyR10. It's found a way to circumvent this auto-deletion code and it's nearing 30 posts.

Texium - 8-8-2014 at 16:02

Well, strike my last... it seems like one somehow made it through and posted 28 times and counting. Not sure how that happened, but it seems like there might be one tiny hole in the automatic deletion system.

Brain&Force - 8-8-2014 at 16:06

We had another extremely aggressive spambot like this one previously. Look, it's spammed every single subforum:

Oddly it stopped at 35 posts...

[Edited on 9.8.2014 by Brain&Force]

Texium - 8-8-2014 at 16:25

Yep, that's the one I was referring to. Posted over thirty times in the end, pretty awful.

The Volatile Chemist - 10-8-2014 at 17:14

Please give us their IPs

At the very least we can DDOS their proxy

Bert - 10-8-2014 at 18:11

"Nuke them from orbit- It's the only way to be sure"

hyfalcon - 10-8-2014 at 19:39

They tried it earlier again today. I don't know what it was, looked like two of us was on it like stink on you know what and before I got down through 6 posts it came back error and was ALLL GONE. LOL

franklyn - 11-9-2014 at 13:33

So what is this ? These aren't listed members and there is no post

Texium - 11-9-2014 at 14:02

I think it's what I was talking about here:

Quote: Originally posted by zts16

Wow, well that automatic deletion thing seems to be working perfectly. I have only seen one spam post since it was implemented, and it no longer existed by the time I hit the report button on it.
The only issue I have is that it still displays the spammer as the last poster in a subforum, which tends to be confusing when checking to see if there are any new posts. It's such a minor cosmetic issue though, if there's no easy solution, it's not something worth fixing.

I thought that the issue had gotten fixed at some point, but apparently it hasn't.

The Volatile Chemist - 11-9-2014 at 14:47

Bert, that's the best usage of a clip/quote 2014. Man, hilarious. But our procedures seem to be working.

Polverone - 15-9-2014 at 14:26

I hope that our upgraded spam defenses are able to cope with the change I am making: I am disabling the requirement for a valid email address to sign up. I have received too many reports of registration attempts failing because confirmation mail is never delivered from SM to the would-be member. This is due to mail services blocking outgoing mail from sciencemadness since we had our mail server temporarily taken over by email spammers last year.

I am guessing that many attempted signups fail and after that initial effort would-be members do not make a second attempt. So I am going to turn that off for now to avoid blocking legitimate signups, and hope that our anti-spam defenses are good enough to handle the change.

Brain&Force - 15-9-2014 at 17:28

And we get a burst of plenty of spam accounts...but no extra spam.

gdflp - 16-9-2014 at 03:11

No kidding, at the time of posting this there were 31 spam accounts logged in out of 34 total users

[Edited on 16-9-2014 by gdflp]

Brain&Force - 16-9-2014 at 11:27

You'd think these spammer would be smart enough to include "amateur science" as one of their hobbies...

If anyone finds an account that lists it as a hobby, post it here.

Little_Ghost_again - 16-9-2014 at 13:23

S how come I got deleted? Little_Ghost gone!!! all my posts gone

. was this a spam thing or did I just get banned and not told?

Polverone - 16-9-2014 at 14:33

I'm sorry Little_Ghost_again, as I said in U2U it is possible that your account was accidentally auto-deleted by anti-spam measures. So far the spammers have been stupid enough to never mix non-spammy links into their posts, but it is possible they are now adding 'legit' links that could lead to legitimate new users being deleted if there is overlap.

EDIT: I have temporarily disabled auto-deletion until I can figure out why I got a false positive on Little_Ghost. Expect to see some spam clogging up the site in the mean time

[Edited on 9-16-2014 by Polverone]

Polverone - 16-9-2014 at 15:05

Oh, what a sad mistake. I didn't have a check for minimum bad-link length. Some how one spammer ended up with a link that was just 'http', no following destination. That meant that a plain mention of http in a Little_Ghost post was enough to get him zapped, since he was recently registered. I don't have a way to restore his threads/posts, but I have added checks to prevent it from happening again.

hyfalcon - 17-9-2014 at 05:03

apparently the spam software was loosened to much. We are being overrun by spam now.

Come on folks, if no one reports the spam as spam then the software can never kick in.

[Edited on 17-9-2014 by hyfalcon]

Bert - 17-9-2014 at 05:31

I'd say the requirement for a valid email address is worth reapplying...

froot - 17-9-2014 at 05:54

Has anyone noticed if spam bots post immediately after registering or not?

If Little_Ghost had a number of posts on the board his account must've had a filterable age to it.

Apply the unforgiving spam filtering to accounts that are within say 12 hours old, then ease up to a more cautious filtering algorithm once they make it past that age without posting crap.

Edit:

If possible you can also move all 'deleted' posts to an invisible section that auto-deletes all content older than say 48 hours, providing you with a safety net to catch any posts by new members that the filtering misidentified. Email confirmations can then be turned off and spam code turned on.

[Edited on 17-9-2014 by froot]

confused - 18-9-2014 at 18:52

what is the criteria for the spam filter to work, must people report the posts or does it magic the spam away?

Im assuming it also gathers information from previous spam posts to determine what future spammer's posts and accounts to delete.

arkoma - 18-9-2014 at 20:04

goddamned thankless job--THANX Polv and Woelen........

Brain&Force - 18-9-2014 at 21:48

Quote: Originally posted by arkoma

goddamned thankless job--THANX Polv and Woelen........

Amen to that!

Is there any way to auto-delete post titles or accounts containing Chinese characters? I don't see any legitimate posts containing them.

Haber - 19-9-2014 at 00:04

Wouldnt a simple catchpa significantly reduce the amount of spam accounts? Pretty much all forums uses it, why is it not used on Science madness?

confused - 19-9-2014 at 07:26

I have terrible luck with captchas, always get them wrong, it appears that my image reccognition software isn't up to date

just to check, it still works to report spam posts as spam right?

gdflp - 21-9-2014 at 13:40

That's interesting, I just reported a spam post where the spammer posted, and then unregistered. What's the point of that?

Polverone - 21-9-2014 at 14:45

There's a bug related to certain non-Latin characters showing up in spammer posts or profiles, where the spammer account gets deleted but the spam post remains because my script chokes on the extra characters. I haven't managed to catch it in progress yet to figure out where the problem is.

The big spam wave that hung around earlier today was because one spammer had a profile like that that was blocking all spam removal operations from completing. I fixed it enough to unblock the process but there's still more work to do.

Brain&Force - 21-9-2014 at 15:22

Polverone, did you allow unregistered users to post?

Polverone - 21-9-2014 at 15:31

No, that's the problem I am talking about. The script gets far enough to delete the spammer account but their actual posts are left lingering because something interrupts the script before it cleans up their posts.

How the hell can these creeps be locked out.

argyrium - 21-9-2014 at 22:11

Is it that simple to post so much spam, so quickly? Guess so; this does not look good.

Bert - 21-9-2014 at 22:30

Just got done weeding out a new batch- I do feel the desire to make this "personal" for the ass hats foisting this garbage on the site...

gdflp - 22-9-2014 at 09:02

Quote: Originally posted by Polverone

I have tweaked the reporting process, somewhat inspired by violet sin. Before spam had to be reported by two trusted members or one moderator before it was auto-deleted. Now it will be auto-deleted if it is reported by one trusted member and one 'semi-trusted' member. Everyone who has been registered at least 60 days and has at least 50 posts automatically becomes a member of the 'semi-trusted' group. This should reduce the waiting time for spam deletion, and means that any frequent user of the site can help stamp out spam.

Would it be possible to make a feature which allows trusted members to report new users which are spam bots. Even if it is only users who have say max 10 posts and have registered within the past day, autodeleting spam bots would make it much easier and allow members to get the spam bots before they even post.

Brain&Force - 25-9-2014 at 20:01

There are pages upon pages upon pages upon page upon pages upon pages upon pages of spam accounts on the member list. Could a few mods wipe all of them?

The Volatile Chemist - 29-9-2014 at 05:27

Right now there has been another wave of spam.... blegh

hyfalcon - 30-9-2014 at 05:03

Here's another wave. Some help reporting it please.

------------------------

Ah, that's better.

[Edited on 30-9-2014 by hyfalcon]

phlogiston - 1-10-2014 at 00:05

Damn, a whole page of Japanese spam. Can I become trusted to help clean it up?

hyfalcon - 1-10-2014 at 01:32

HELP!

S.C. Wack - 3-10-2014 at 16:31

Quite a wave of signups today, all in the form of ODeacon, MFaunce, etc. or Z5194, K92V, and so on. Apparently the not-Latin or multiple random letters with a number members stuck out somehow?

hyfalcon - 3-10-2014 at 16:51

Here come da spam!

Texium - 8-10-2014 at 11:35

What happens when a spammer posts in an actual active thread? I don't want to report it as spam if there is a possibility of it being automatically deleted... unless of course it only deletes the one post.

violet sin - 10-10-2014 at 21:32

so I see a lot of names in the format of: cap first initial + cap first letter of last name, all lower case rest of last name a lot. and most of them are 0 post names. now if you copy the names in that format, and google them, you get a LOT of accounts/members in other forums with 0 posts. like some one wants the names to have more hits if it is searched or some crap? could this be a diff kind of spam?

I went to who's online from the forum logo and picked the random name- BMileham, and got DDTankPRO, Soshified, Molly Maven Forum, The Tax Forum, Twitter, FitLink, and 2 others that were shut down from excessive site travel. all apparently 0 posts/activity and some not even followed up on to confirm membership, still pending.

next I picked: ABarlee, and got pdfforge Forums, xGame Portal Forums, Bookmarkone.info( which only post was a coupon for bed bath and beyond), Green Business Institute, My Favorite Oldies( member info had links in it, including a malpractice layer), Video and Photo Community and more.

so this is weird, give it a try some time. I have done this on more than one occasion and I always find a bunch of empty profiles with 0 posts and links to crap. I have no idea what they are trying to do here, because on scimad their profiles have no links and they have made no posts. but there are a lot of them... looks to be 31 names with that format online at this time.

of the 31
SMadison,had a link to a lease in his profile
RNicholls, had a youtube link
PKlein, youtube link
NLorenz " "
MEstrella " "
LHarms, other link
KPolding, facebook link to toddler swimwear
JPercy, horschop-onlin link

and I got bored again. so some of these accounts do have links, a fair number don't, and all have 0 posts( that I have checked)

Polverone - 10-10-2014 at 23:06

Thanks for the note. I thought I had already fixed that. I have confirmed a fix now. Members who have never posted will no longer appear in Who's Online. Also, if you are not logged in to the site you will no longer be able to view the profile of a zero-post member, even if you know the user name.

jock88 - 24-11-2014 at 05:53

Bloody hell,
Never seen anything like this:

froot - 24-11-2014 at 07:00

Please, we really need to vet new registrations. I'll do it!

WGTR - 24-11-2014 at 07:23

I have just reported each and every single one of these spam messages. Now someone else, please start reporting so that we can clear these out!

Now, I have a question. Why is it that some spam disappears quickly after I report it, but other messages linger for hours on end, like the stench of a dead woodchuck on a hot summer day? Is it perhaps a quirk in the spam reporting script?

[Edited on 11-24-2014 by WGTR]

Bert - 24-11-2014 at 08:45

It is probably because I have been quite busy on many days and thus may go 6-12 hours between checking my U2U for spam reports... Or on a day off, I may be sitting with a rifle and waiting for a careless deer to stroll by, with the sciencemadness forum on my smart phone to pass the time- In which case, I get your spam report and deal with it in seconds.

I believe I have been reporting/deleting more spam lately than the other moderators, due to having more free time to access the forum and "sweep the floors".

I would suggest that some more of the most active spam reporting members (including WGTR!) be granted the "trusted spam sniffer" power of instant spam banishment. This could free up some of my time for other projects I would like to organize and post on here?

JAVA - 24-11-2014 at 10:00

What if you follow the troubleshooting guides on XMB1.9.11 ?

Bert - 24-11-2014 at 10:16

Quote: Originally posted by JAVA

What if you follow the troubleshooting guides on XMB1.9.11 ?

Please be more specific.

JAVA - 25-11-2014 at 08:47

Quote: Originally posted by Bert

Quote: Originally posted by JAVA

What if you follow the troubleshooting guides on XMB1.9.11 ?

Please be more specific.

Ask it to the admin or moderators on XMB, what do they write ?

If I'm right then Apache do have a license until January 2015, just one month left with this XMB version. Why should they do many efforts then -->

AFAIK, they are working on version 2. UTFSE on that website

1) Check the system requirements http://forums.xmbforum2.com/viewthread.php?tid=774104

2) Legacy bugs fixed in 1.9.11, the full list stands http://docs.xmbforum2.com/Introduction/Change_Logs

btw:
I did see bfesser in the memberlist and during that time spam was not very common.

[Edited on 26-11-2014 by JAVA]

MrHomeScientist - 25-11-2014 at 09:20

Quote: Originally posted by jock88

Bloody hell,
Never seen anything like this:

The amount of spam posts, or the fact that M96E is both the new guy and the new girl?

bismuthate - 26-11-2014 at 04:51

Why did they unleash this massive amount of spam upon us now?

WGTR - 26-11-2014 at 08:06

Quote: Originally posted by bismuthate

Why did they unleash this massive amount of spam upon us now?

How many chickens can dance on the head of a pin? Why did the angel cross the road? Why are spammers so evil? Why am I smoking my socks? These are imponderable questions, perhaps better left to the philosophers.

All I want to see, is that the spam disappears when I use the "report" function. I would also send taunting U2Us to the spammers, but I fear that some of them may also be good hackers. In the interest of self-preservation, I restrain myself...

[takes off silly hat, and puts serious hat back on]

It would be nice to know what effect my reports are having. If action from a mod is required to delete spam, then it would be best for me to let the mods do the housekeeping, and not take time messing with it myself. It would certainly be better for my indigestion. I hate spam.

JAVA - 26-11-2014 at 09:17

Quote: Originally posted by bismuthate

Why did they unleash this massive amount of spam upon us now?

What do you see if you open SM in https, I see this in Belgium:

"www.sciencemadness.org uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because it is self-signed. The certificate expired on 2/11/2014 21:36. The current time is 26/11/2014 17:55. (Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)"

The reason is that they didn't buy a very cheap official SSL certificate and that hackers can indeed penetrate in the php server side of the system.

I don't report spam anymore because it seems that I speak to the walls, many other members have this feeling too. Just wait a few months and don't post things anymore until they have fixed it, simply.

btw: there is U2U (but think 4 to 5 minutes, preview your post, think again before you put on that very fast nervous button)

[Edited on 26-11-2014 by JAVA]

j_sum1 - 26-11-2014 at 15:55

I just reported a glut of spam that was filling the page. It is still arriving as I type.
I just wanted to confirm whether I am doing something useful or am I merely filling the moderators' inboxes with stuff that will get dealt with anyway.

chemrox - 1-12-2014 at 01:57

@Bert: I hope you are kicking these bastids out for good and while you're at it why not let everyone know that Dr. "Doc" Martin makes a much better shoe that can be had for a lot less money

Chemosynthesis - 1-12-2014 at 19:46

Quote: Originally posted by JAVA

The reason is that they didn't buy a very cheap official SSL certificate and that hackers can indeed penetrate in the php server side of the system.

I don't report spam anymore because it seems that I speak to the walls, many other members have this feeling too. Just wait a few months and don't post things anymore until they have fixed it, simply.

There was some reasoning behind this in another thread. I continue to report spam and hope that others do so.

S.C. Wack - 1-12-2014 at 20:12

Quote: Originally posted by JAVA

I did see bfesser in the memberlist and during that time spam was not very common.

It's not like he was the SM spam savior...there have been some 50,000 spam members registered in the past couple months, so the relatively few spam threads you actually see before being deleted is really nothing to complain about since it could be much worse, and it's looking like it probably will.

Bert - 1-12-2014 at 20:29

Quote:

there have been some 50,000 spam members registered in the past couple months

Jesus God in heaven.

And the requirements for registering as a new new member have not been adjusted to prevent this?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Screw this. I will take up knitting- That might actually have a productive outcome for my time.

diddi - 1-12-2014 at 20:52

cant remember... is there a captcha in the membership application? maybe there should be if not.

MrHomeScientist - 16-12-2014 at 07:14

Brace the gates! The hordes of spammers are upon us! I'm reporting as fast as I can, but we're being overwhelmed!

Hold the line!!

confused - 16-12-2014 at 07:23

im reporting as fast as i can

CuReUS - 16-12-2014 at 07:24

good topics are getting pushed down because of spam

they should make a system where you would need the approval of a moderator to be able to register

a similar thing was done when i was part of a chemistry group in facebook ,where people would ask questions and get answers from other members

so unless the admin thought that your post was worth asking ,it would be put on hold and not visible to other members

this stopped people from posting ads and other crap .
hopefully something like this could be done
these spams are like cancer

[Edited on 16-12-2014 by CuReUS]

gdflp - 16-12-2014 at 08:09

That would be a lot of work for the mods. Unless they're willing to bump up some of us newer members to a pseudo mod status to be able to do what you suggest, I think that it would overwhelm them.

jock88 - 16-12-2014 at 18:16

The spammers were busy tonight.
All areas except password protected and detritus (how ironic) are contaminated. Never seen that before, though I have seen close to it.
Hope it's not that 'he/she' again

The Volatile Chemist - 17-12-2014 at 12:34

Despite the fact they use proxies, their IPs should be released...

CuReUS - 18-12-2014 at 00:51

Quote: Originally posted by gdflp

That would be a lot of work for the mods.

not necessarily .i dont know the stats of SM ,but on an average how many people do you think register daily?

atmost 10 ?

and i think there are 4-5 mods
so ,why do you think it would be so difficult
they can just cancel the users,whose usernames make no sense

most spam usernames have random alphanumericals as you can see

[Edited on 18-12-2014 by CuReUS]

gdflp - 18-12-2014 at 05:03

But how many spam accounts register? They could have to scroll through a few hundred accounts per week just due to the large volumes of spam.

gdflp - 18-12-2014 at 05:24

What do you mean, you can't? But think how many hundreds of spam accounts register. The mods would have to go through all of those.

confused - 24-12-2014 at 21:45

more spam incoming

Metacelsus - 31-12-2014 at 16:45

WHAT is THIS? Spam in the anti-spam thread??

This is really getting bad!

[Edited on 1-1-2015 by Cheddite Cheese]

j_sum1 - 31-12-2014 at 16:57

Well, I laughed!

The Volatile Chemist - 1-1-2015 at 11:21

Someone totally pulled a spam joke, that's not legit spam. 18kk7a2y7l sounds mad up, not randomly generated. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same person who made Brain and Farce.

Bert - 1-1-2015 at 13:19

I was really bored while waiting for my midnight show time, edited a real spam in "tired of spam" thread into that format... Cut out all his links, added some pictures, defaced his status & mood. Happy New Years, everyone-

Probably shouldn't abuse moderator powers like that!

jock88 - 1-1-2015 at 19:26

18kk7a2y7l IS HEREBY BANNED.

The Volatile Chemist - 2-1-2015 at 09:40

That's pretty great

I thought he probably wouldn't ask for his status to be changed to that.

phlogiston - 2-1-2015 at 16:39

Quote: Originally posted by Bert

I would suggest that some more of the most active spam reporting members (including WGTR!) be granted the "trusted spam sniffer" power of instant spam banishment. This could free up some of my time for other projects I would like to organize and post on here?

This.
I feel like reporting spam is a waste of my time, as it (1) could be done far more effectively by someone with trusted status and (2) with a very high probability is redundant as many other members will likely have already reported the same spam by the time I come across it.
At the same time, it feels bad not contributing to solving the spam problem as much as possible.

[Edited on 3-1-2015 by phlogiston]

Bert - 2-1-2015 at 17:06

Whenever I log in, first thing I do is glance at PM in box. 99%+ of my PM's are members reporting spam, please do continue to report any you see. PARTICULARLY the spam messages posted as a reply to an existing thread- I am not likely to even notice these if it's not in a thread I am following.

[Edited on 3-1-2015 by Bert]

Brain&Force - 6-1-2015 at 20:06

If you need a dedicated spamkill squad, count me in.

Metacelsus - 7-1-2015 at 06:01

Me too.

gdflp - 7-1-2015 at 06:51

I'll help too.

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