Spambots

Robin9

fermi wrote: »

If you have some technical suggestions then post them here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1632855

Fermi you know as well as I that MSE Towers have been given lots of suggestions - if they don't have the skills they can buy them in.

I am simply an end user who expects to access and contribute to forums without having to fight through piles of junk.

fermi

No need to take issue with me.

MSE have had more moans and "suggestions" from me than they can count I think, so I am as frustrated as everyone.

Suggestions also take time to sort out without screwing up a forum this big up for everyone in the attempt. It's bad enough on a small one, believe me. It's not as simple to block these bu**ers as it seems, even with more resources.

Former_MSE_Andrea

Thanks for your help everyone!

We have systems in place and the spam button's there for the ones that do make their way through to the Forum.

Tixy

MSE_Andrea wrote: »

Thanks for your help everyone!

We have systems in place and the spam button's there for the ones that do make their way through to the Forum.

Hi Andrea

That sounds like the MSE team aren't actively looking at any ways to improve the current system.

Can you confirm if that is the case?

Robin9

Robin9 wrote: »

A question for MSE Towers.

How many SPAM messages did you get today ?

MAR Andrea - can you respond to this please ?

torbrex

If only there was a way to connect the number of clicks on the spam button to the posting privilidge of a newbie.

This would prevent them from starting multiple threads on the forum, it might also be an insentive for existing members to get involved as they would see that clicking the spam button was doing some good sooner.


At present a newbie can start 60 new threads in half an hour and it takes 'X' number of clicks on the spam button to remove each of these posts so that is 60 x 'X' to see the results but if the newbie were to receive 'X' number of clicks across all of their posts and they were PPR the boards would not fill up as much and members would see their efforts working sooner.

moneyistooshorttomention

comeandgo wrote: »

Maybe if you stopped being policemen then the powers that be would be forced to do something. Try it for a day and see what's on the site.

That is one possibility obviously and I would say there is a good chance the Forum would be pretty much unusable for the first "page" or two of every sub-forum by the end of the day - judging by there seem to be several of these spammers and they often do post after post on each sub-forum they spam.

Not sure of the technicalities re whether there is anything further that the site could do to prevent these spammers if it was obvious to them that the Forum had basically stopped working because of the spammers...

I would think the spammers are whacked out of existence so fast and before their feet can even touch the ground that I'm not sure they are managing to achieve their desired (ie top of Google ratings) position anyway before they're removed?? So hopefully they will give up trying to do their piggybacking at some point as a waste of effort on their part?

MothballsWallet

MSE_Andrea wrote: »

Thanks for your help everyone!

We have systems in place and the spam button's there for the ones that do make their way through to the Forum.

I saw the amount of Korean and black magic crap :spam: on the boards today and, after clicking the :spam: button on a couple, I just don't want to click any more of them, sorry.

moneyistooshorttomention

I got virtuous this morning and clicked my way through reporting all 22 posts put up in the early hours by the latest Chinese spambot.

What I am wondering is whether the techies could introduce a system whereby there is automatic checking of the number of posts put up within a 24 hour period by a poster and when the total of posts for the day put up by any one poster reaches, say, 10 posts the system checks whether its a new poster. If the system then finds that it is a new poster - then it automatically prevents any further posts by them until its been established they are a genuine poster?

I cant see that its possible to put an automatic outright bar on more than 10 posts in a day because there is the odd genuine poster that will put up more than that. For instance, I've noticed a relatively recent poster (of the genuine variety) who just likes posting one HECK of a lot and I counted up how many posts she had put up in one day recently and it was about 30 or so. She does so many because she likes to put up critical posts - but some of her posts are normal ones.

So there needs to be a way to differentiate between genuine prolific posters and spambot prolific posters and I think this is max. of 10 daily and then the system has some sort of check in place to see whether they are genuine posters might be one way to go.

Perhaps new posters could be automatically restricted to a certain number of posts in a day until they have been a "member" of the Forum for a week?

That wouldn't stop any particular spambot - but it would limit the number of posts they could put up that day and there wouldn't be quite so many for us to report/the mods to delete.

Robin9

fermi wrote: »

No need to take issue with me.

MSE have had more moans and "suggestions" from me than they can count I think, so I am as frustrated as everyone.

Suggestions also take time to sort out without screwing up a forum this big up for everyone in the attempt. It's bad enough on a small one, believe me. It's not as simple to block these bu**ers as it seems, even with more resources.

I did not mean to offend - getting frustrated with lack of action from MSE TOWERS. This is a programming issue - not one for the users to waste their time on.