Sad git spamming

Laz123

There's one sad git trying to spoil our forum.

bod1467

It's not just this board either - lots of boards have been targeted.

chunter

The Admins must have had their Christmas party last night. MIA.
Hundreds of these posts all over the forums.

aerostar

Looks like it is more than spamming - lots of posts seem to have had lots of letters changed to exclamation marks and is ongoing.

MSE should take the forum off line .

Just looked at one of my posts which was OK earlier and it is now un-readable, so they must be hacking the forum for sigs and posts to be changed.

Former_MSE_Megan

Hi everyone,

Not to worry, we're just tinkering with the settings to get this spam sorted. The exclamation marks are something we've done. Should be fixed shortly

Former_MSE_Andrea

Thank you so much to everyone who's helped remove the spam with the spam button - that is always the best way to help us when this happens (as well as bumping "good" threads)

Thank you - you're all fab

kazwookie

MSE_Megan wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Not to worry, we're just tinkering with the settings to get this spam sorted. The exclamation marks are something we've done. Should be fixed shortly

Might it not be easier to take the forum down for a couple of hours to get it sorted?

Then put it back, minus the spammer or what ever is causing it.

Good luck to you all sorting it out

bod1467

Your sig ...

35 !! g!. 35 !!!!!dy g!!! (5 !!!!! !! g!! !!d !!! !! !!!!!)

:rotfl:

cinderfella

Bit of an eye opener seeing what's going on.
Here in Cyprus the shop-keepers are rather pained by Internet shopping as they lose out. Could be anybody doing this.
Shame, this site helps so many people.

R34GTT

MSE_Andrea wrote: »

Thank you so much to everyone who's helped remove the spam with the spam button - that is always the best way to help us when this happens (as well as bumping "good" threads)

Thank you - you're all fab

2 things:

1. Given the spam bot is using the same topic title can you not ask your DBA to go into the forum's database and select all topics with that title started in the last 24 hours and delete?

2. The forum registration needs tightning up, Captcha is useless and is annoying for genuine new users. Why not deploy different verification code such as honeypot forms which catchout spambots alongside some kind of logical question and answer. So many options that could be implemented with ease. Also I second the previous poster who said you should take the forum down while you sort this out or at the very least stop new registrations.

Uxb

.....and also a plea try and do something about the general problem on the forums of endless multiple registrations.