Forum Spamming

[CitTone]

I note that the "old" forum has just been hit by a widespread spam attack.

Never understood why anyone does this, as it's the equivalent to advertising by intruding into a private club and shouting over the conversations through a megaphone. They didn't even have the decency to prefix their subject lines "OT"....harrumph!

The price of freedom is perpetual vigilance.

[Max Headroom]

I noticed a lot of that happening there the other week

[ScarbSaab]

They do it because it costs them virtually nothing. Similar to email spam, they need one response out of thousands, if not millions, to make it profitable. As for decency, they are happy to inconvenience, annoy and offend the majority of people to make money off one sucker.

It's the same underlying attitude we've seen on the streets: "I'll do what I want regardless of the consequences to anyone else because I don't care about them or society in general."

[Max Headroom]

They all look like this and need putting out of their misery 

[David]

 

[sgould]

It seems that the old place has been abandoned.

No new members have been approved since 29th/30th June.

Any new members who have been posting would have been approved before that date.  The spammers must have slipped through the net somehow.  Not a surprise when we were having to delete around 80 spammers a day.  All one at a time because the forum software is obsolete.

I don't see any new mods either.

It seems to be a common problem these days.  Once a "forum specialist" buys up a forum, they set up the ads and abandon the site to the mods.  Their money comes in, they do no work.  Everything is done by the mods for free.  Yet when things go wrong the mods can't get any useful response from the site owners.   

I'm involved with a satnav forum that has gone the same way.  But at least on that one the software was updated enough to make it viable.

[ScarbSaab]

For anyone else who manages forums, a few weeks ago I applied KeyCaptcha to registration for one we run for a client. At the moment it seems to have worked - the obviously bogus registrations seem to have stopped.

I also considered NuCaptcha. However, as http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/11/video_based_captchas/ points out, if they farm the Captcha work out to a sweatshop, nothing is safe.

I also have the forum set to require moderation for posts by new users (they come off this after five posts) but this may not suit all forums, and needs moderators able to respond quickly.

[Max Headroom]

I also have the forum set to require moderation for posts by new users (they come off this after five posts) but this may not suit all forums, and needs moderators able to respond quickly.

That sounds like a very good idea - but what would be deemed as a quick response?

[ScarbSaab]

In our case, we expect most traffic to be during our working hours and relatively low volume (for the time being at least), so I've set it up to notify moderators on an hourly basis, but could easily do more frequently.

It will depend on the forum - for something like STT it might not work as posts come at all hours and it's already lively enough for there to be responses whilst you're typing one! I think if you manage a new poster's expectations, it works.

[Saabman]

The old forum ran well just as I expect this one will, there always seems to be one of us about day and night to sort out any problems 

[Max Headroom]

I won't be about quite as much when I get back to UK - also, the time difference and my odd shifts gives me an advantage to drop in at unearthly hours to check... 

[Geoff1951]

The old forum ran well just as I expect this one will, there always seems to be one of us about day and night to sort out any problems 

And for that, I for one am very grateful. Thanks chaps.