Spam solutions

Reaper

Recently the spam has been getting out of hand and with such a large audience non-moderated forum it is only going to get worse. Even when reported the spammers know it will be seen for a long time before it goes and they can always put it back. I've been trying to think of solutions and here are a couple of ideas:

1) Site blacklist. If a spammer tries to get you to go to their web site it is put on a blacklist. Any post that mentions it won't get posted. (Currently only a crude version of this exists in which the link is changed to exclamation marks).

2) When the "Report Abuse" icon on a post is pressed it immediately hides the post until the moderators have a chance to look at it. I realise this is open to abuse so I suggest only those with a high post count have the ability to do this, and the feature would be permanently withdrawn from any member who abused it.

If practical these ideas would starve the spammers of the free advertising time they currently get.

davetrousers

Reaper wrote: »

2) When the "Report Abuse" icon on a post is pressed it immediately hides the post until the moderators have a chance to look at it. I realise this is open to abuse so I suggest only those with a high post count have the ability to do this, and the feature would be permanently withdrawn from any member who abused it.

Like another tier in the MSE Forum hierarchy.

1. Martin Lewis
2. Moderators
3. Spam wipers

savemoney

Wait in next couple of weeks the grabbit forum will be full of

"I no this isnt the right place but..."

normanmark

The easiest way to beat the spammers is to upgrade the forum software to the latest version. Its on 3.6.5 at the moment & the latest version out is 3.7.4

I'd say upgrading would start to sort out a lot of the problems.

savemoney

we have another one tonight same posts for past week they using another domain name now

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.html?u=577465

Reaper

This morning I looked at the Savings & Investment board to find 5 different threads from 5 different "users" all spamming an advert to the same site. The usernames look computer generated.

Because it is so slow to get the posts removed the spammers are winning and this is just the start. The site has been lucky so far but as better auto-spamming programs get written if the site doesn't do some defensive programming to keep up we are going to get swamped.

Most emails are now spam. Soon most posts will be too.

savemoney

I saw at leasts 3 usernames all posting same stuff. They were so bad I gave up looking on mse as most of the boards were full of the same advert

gazza975526570

i know this subject is talked to death and reappears constantly but given the amount of posts on here i think the spam is minimal.

You know the spam posts so dont need to look at them so it really doesnt affect me using the site

Good gambling to everyone!

alphason

Just reported around 30 identical post from a couple of different user names.

It seem they all come overnight UK time. I am an expat in Thailand and have offered to volunteer to removed post/users, as I am GMT+7 they could all be gone when the UK wakes up.

alphason

alphason wrote: »

Just reported around 30 identical post from a couple of different user names.

It seem they all come overnight UK time. I am an expat in Thailand and have offered to volunteer to removed post/users, as I am GMT+7 they could all be gone when the UK wakes up.

Closer to 50 now, if someone could have the authority to ban or suspend the poster than this would not keep happening.

10past6

alphason wrote: »

Just reported around 30 identical post from a couple of different user names.

I got sick to the back teeth of clicking on "New Posts" and seeing a whole list of spam adverts, there was 10 in a line at one stage :mad: :mad: :mad: