Make spammers pay.

[astroron (Ron)]

Alex,your Spammer is back with a vengeance this morning.
You have stirred up a hornets nest.
Cheers

[xelasnave]

Ron I would like to think I had such an influence but alas I have none...anywhere or upon any event.

Mind you there is a certain satisfaction in accepting ones lack of importance.

Tell me Ron are you able to eat spam these days.

I can't drink sherry can you guess why?

I am with Mike as to inaction as you can bet no matter what you do they will side step it.

Alex

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Ron I would like to think I had such an influence but alas I have none...anywhere or upon any event.

Mind you there is a certain satisfaction in accepting ones lack of importance.

Tell me Ron are you able to eat spam these days.

I can't drink sherry can you guess why?

I am with Mike as to inaction as you can bet no matter what you do they will side step it.

Alex

Thanks Alex.
I have no problem eating Spam whatsoever, I have worked in various food factories both in the UK and here in Australia, and seen all the processes, none which have effected me in anyway.
I have worked in Abattoirs in Queensland and the NT
food processing factories in Melbourne and Brisbane, and yes I still eat their products. no problem.

Cheers

[lazjen (Chris)]

The spamming of the forums though is making this site quite unusable. An updated thread may or may not have a real message to it.

Not sure if there's a solution, but I don't seem to recall seeing this happen on other forums I'm on.

[JA]

Originally Posted by lazjen

The spamming of the forums though is making this site quite unusable. An updated thread may or may not have a real message to it.

Not sure if there's a solution, but I don't seem to recall seeing this happen on other forums I'm on.

As a partial solution :

1. New members with fewer than X posts, (say 5 to 10) should be barred from posting a hyperlink. This would take away their oxygen as they would not gain the click $$ from any hyperlink as it couldn't be clicked on. In terms of targeting, many of our spammers are new members with 1 or so posts, and/or

2. New member posts should be subject to moderator review prior to being allowed to be posted to public forum view. These posts go in to quarantine pending moderator approval. Then if spam, deleted in one button click, along with the user account. Yes it obviously increases moderator workload, BUT what is that compared to deleting all the spam posts after the event which are hiding in other threads as well as deleting newly created threads and then banning the spammer user account. If spammers, perhaps even AI-bots don't see the result of their action, i.e: no posts at all on public view, depending on how "intelligent" they are they may drop the target URL and go elsewhere.

Just sayin'

Best
JA

[JA]

^ Q.E.D. ...... Time to act.

Best
JA

[Robair (Robert)]

Gday JA

I mentioned your solutions in an earlier post derived from experience I have previously had running a Model Railway forum. All solid ideas that work.
For the right here right now I am noting our spammy waste of oxygen is creating new usernames/ logins.
Could I suggest to our mods that this function of creating new logins is disabled for a period of time whilst the spam usernames are deleted/ blocked? The idiot(s) behind all of this will then head elsewhere to wreak their pointless digital havoc.

Rob B

[xelasnave]

I change my position.
Something needs to be done.
Maybe a few trustees given power to move posts to a cess pool thread so mods can deal with them but mbers can act...
So I come on before sunrise notice Tinty and removed thread relocating it to a thread so when mods arrive they can do what they do...Maybe such a power could be extended all members who have been here five years...
Deputy mods.
But this largest spam seems damaging to the site.
Alex

[multiweb (Marc)]

I suspect the bots would bypass all these measures. The easiest solution is at the source. Each member or post is a record in the database. There are only a handful of files that can generate an insert statement. That's the bottleneck where you put a big automated hammer in place. then grab some popcorn and watch the filter in action.

[FlashDrive (Poppy)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

That's the bottleneck where you put a big automated hammer in place. then grab some popcorn and watch the filter in action.

that's the ticket .....

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Block all indian ip's all philipino ip's and ukrainian ips' and you eliminate most of the spam.
I'm a mod on netrider and we blocked whole country ip's until newer better spam software was implemented,
It captures 99% of all spam and we do implement software where newbs cannot post a link before 35 posts, even then they need moderator approval.

[LewisM]

Leave me the Ukrainians - I like playing with them

The 3 sites I used to moderate received upwards of 300 spam bots a day (VERY large US websites with upwards of 200,000 members) - they simply instituted country-wide IP bans and a requirement for moderator approval of each new applicant - each applicant was required not only to pass Kaptcha, but also to write a short dissertation why they should be a member and to also answer specific site related knowledge questions (like asking "What is the largest planet in the Solar System" etc). Worked perfectly the time I was there (about 5 years ago now).

You simply cannot "fine" spammers because they are simply an algorithm in a spam program - there is no physical entity apart from some guy running a command line in a program to execute on a swathe of addresses.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Blocking large blocks of IPs can be a problem. I remember Telstra owned small blocks of IPs that were within malaysian and thai blocks so it's easy to block legitimate traffic.

TBH I'm observing that the bulk of the spam on the net still comes from the US.

Couple of things you can do to deal with bots. Basic checks are user agent, referrer, host, IP, frequency/hit rate. Some can be spoofed but any combination of these will give you a pretty good indication if it's a machine, a person or programmatically generated. From there on you can apply some very simple logic. That's all there is to it really... and the mods can get off their blood pressure tablets

[kittenshark (Cheryl-Ann Tan)]

I used to get 3D spam walking into the store all the time despite having "No Hawkers", "No soliciting" signs.

Put a new sign up that those who don't obey the "No Soliciting" sign has to pay a fine of $50 ("yes, we take EFTPOS")

No one's tried since.

[LewisM]

Sign I saw at an historic aircraft hanger once:

"No Hawkers, unless they be Hurricanes, Sea Furys or Hunters"

(aviation knowledge joke).

[RAJAH235]

Originally Posted by Robair

<...snip...>...When a new login/ profile appeared any posts were "held" until myself or another moderator has viewed the post, if it was all good we would release the comment to the forum. If there were 5 good comments we would give full access ongoing. If the post was crappy spam we would delete the unreleased post and block the IP.
<.../snip...>
Rob B

We Moderators at the mozillaZine fora, do a similar thing with any new registered Accts.
Any spam we see or is reported from an un-registered user is immediately "canned."
Sorry. I just had to say that.

If a newly registered user submits a post then it does not appear to the General Public until it's been verified as legit.
&.....You have to careful when blocking IP's.

The "Stop forum spam" site is one of the sites we use to check them.

Takes a while to perform all the checks etc., but as I am the only Mod on at certain times, (the others are all either asleep or doing their jobs), then it's up to me to kill all the idiots, ie; until another Mod comes on-line.

Regs, L..

[RB (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by RAJAH235

If a newly registered user submits a post then it does not appear to the General Public until it's been verified as legit.
&.....You have to careful when blocking IP's.

The "Stop forum spam" site is one of the sites we use to check them.

Regs, L..

Yep, I use "Stop Forum Spam" daily, I have it open on a tab for quick access.
I also use a couple of other sites that help me check the "new users".
A lot of them get banned even while they're registering but we're not online 24/7 so some get through and because they're mostly bots they can spam multiple threads very quickly as we've seen.

Unfortunately Mike's the only one that can implement the other measures that you guys mention and I've asked him to look into it many times and I know other members have sent him PM's with these suggestions too so it's up to him to put these in place.
Until then it's up to Al, Dave and myself to ban them when we're online, so we appreciate your help in reporting anything you see and your patience because we know they've become very annoying.

RB

[lazjen (Chris)]

Originally Posted by RB

Unfortunately Mike's the only one that can implement the other measures that you guys mention and I've asked him to look into it many times and I know other members have sent him PM's with these suggestions too so it's up to him to put these in place.

If this has been asked for on a number times and nothing has been said or done - that's not a good sign for the overall support on this site. If Mike is not able and/or willing to do these types of changes, then perhaps he needs to consider handing over the site to someone who can.

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by lazjen

If this has been asked for on a number times and nothing has been said or done - that's not a good sign for the overall support on this site. If Mike is not able and/or willing to do these types of changes, then perhaps he needs to consider handing over the site to someone who can.

Its probably unfair to suggest that.
Mike has his reasons for his management style and even if not perfect in anothers view he deserves unreserved credit for this site..the mods do also.

Alex

[RB (Andrew)]

Mike is the owner and he's doing the best he can juggling work, family and hobbies (as we all do).
He is running the site (since 2004) as best he can and we're here to support him in that.
Thirteen years is a long time and it's still going strong offering good content to the astro community around the world.

RB