Spam

Radiantsoul
Radiantsoul Posts: 2,096 Forumite
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in Savings & investments
What is with all the spam today?

Comments

  • JJ_Egan
    JJ_Egan Posts: 20,281 Forumite
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    Radiantsoul wrote: »
    What is with all the spam today?


    Been like that for weeks .
  • mp3duck
    mp3duck Posts: 1,305 Forumite
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    They need to have a captcha before you post.. Would be a bit annoying having to enter one each time, but would hopefully stop/reduce the spammers...
  • Vortigern
    Vortigern Posts: 3,243 Forumite
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    It's time something was done. It should be quite easy to trap any post using foreign character sets, which have no legitimate use on this forum.
  • jamesd
    jamesd Posts: 26,103 Forumite
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    edited 1 July 2015 at 1:06PM
    Captchas are not effective at stopping human spammers. It's dirt cheap to hire people to make posts. There are even places set up to solve captchas for spammers using automated posting, with humans just doing the captcha part.

    It's also somewhat easier for a person averaging 0.38 posts per day to say captchas isn't too bad vs say one averaging 4.45 posts a day or 19.2 posts a day. The captchas end up doing most harm to those contributing the most.

    It is possible to have captchas that are only applicable for a few days then which go away. That reduces the cost but annoys those who most need good and easy introduction to the forum, the newcomers.

    MSE have said that they are working on a solution.

    Meanwhile the spam button gets the job done eventually, after around five or six people do it for each individual spam post. Grouping by account so that an account gets suspended after a while can reduce the workload from that when an account is used for lots of spam, though it's desirable to wait at least fifteen minutes so a spam run finishes, or at least does a lot, before it happens, so the spammer thinks that the run has succeeded.
  • Vortigern
    Vortigern Posts: 3,243 Forumite
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    It seems that TPTB are just deleting posts as they appear, rather than imposing immediate PPR of the spammers.
  • Radiantsoul
    Radiantsoul Posts: 2,096 Forumite
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    I reported as spam a load of them from this morning and lots are still showing. I think perhaps some have disappeared though.
  • Eco_Miser
    Eco_Miser Posts: 4,708 Forumite
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    Vortigern wrote: »
    It seems that TPTB are just deleting posts as they appear, rather than imposing immediate PPR of the spammers.
    If about six users press the spam button on a post, it disappears automatically. Imposing PPR requires human intervention.
    Eco Miser
    Saving money for well over half a century
  • Glen_Clark
    Glen_Clark Posts: 4,397 Forumite
    Best way to deal with spammers is for nobody to buy anything from them.
    If it never works, they won't do it :)
    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair
  • Upsidedown_Bear
    Upsidedown_Bear Posts: 18,264 Forumite
    Combo Breaker First Post
    edited 1 July 2015 at 6:20PM
    Message from Martin about the spam :)
    Message
  • maninthestreet
    maninthestreet Posts: 16,127 Forumite
    First Anniversary
    Glad to see Martin is taking it seriously.
    "You were only supposed to blow the bl**dy doors off!!"
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