Spambots

torbrex

46 unchecked posts by this new member this morning.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2402099

some with over 40 views and yet not enough clicks on the button to remove the posts.

Gingernutty

torbrex wrote: »

46 unchecked posts by this new member this morning.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2402099

some with over 40 views and yet not enough clicks on the button to remove the posts.

There are two.

Both posting between 2am and 5am thereby ensuring their spam stays up for as long as possible.....

moneyistooshorttomention

torbrex wrote: »

46 unchecked posts by this new member this morning.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/member.php?u=2402099

some with over 40 views and yet not enough clicks on the button to remove the posts.

I know <sighs> and reported a couple of them - but didn't have the patience to report the lot.

I can see that they've gone from some sub-forums (ie the more popular) and I am guessing that the system is set up on a per individual sub-forum basis.

What I wonder is whether the system could be set up to automatically scan for posts appearing in a foreign language across the entire forum and "put them on hold" or just plain delete them automatically if they aren't in English?

I also wonder if the system could be altered so that if, say, more than 5 posts by the same poster in the same time period have had the spam button pushed on them (across the whole Forum) by even quite a low number of forum members (say 10 posts made within an 8 hour time period would qualify for "going on hold" if even 20 forum members reported them across the whole Forum?)

EDIT; But definitely my preferred option is for the system to be set up to block foreign languages automatically. It wouldn't stop all the spammers - but it would deal with this prolific Chinese one. I'm no techie - so don't know if its possible to do this and without it "catching out" the more illiterate genuine posters that post in English?

moneyistooshorttomention

Gingernutty wrote: »

There are two.

Both posting between 2am and 5am thereby ensuring their spam stays up for as long as possible.....

I wondered whether the timing was deliberate - ie middle of our night chosen.

It may be that its coming up at night-time (to us) because of different time zones and its the spammers' middle of the day time - but it is a possibility that the spammers are picking our night-time deliberately.

deskhelp

Forum registration question should be changed so that bot scripts cannot auto register thats the major reason I guess.

fermi

MSE_Andrea wrote: »

you'll hopefully reach a point soon where you realise you haven't seen much spam for a while (fingers crossed!)

Not this morning.

LABMAN

fermi wrote: »

Not this morning.

...or this afternoon.

Feyfangirl

Spambots seem to be flooding the forums at the moment, on the forum I moderate we're heavily under attack by them -_- cleaned out over 250 threads in the space of ten minutes -_-

moneyistooshorttomention

Feyfangirl wrote: »

Spambots seem to be flooding the forums at the moment, on the forum I moderate we're heavily under attack by them -_- cleaned out over 250 threads in the space of ten minutes -_-

Would it help if we knew which forum it is? - or, if you dont want to tell us all, then PM the administrators of this Forum.

Shared knowledge of a shared problem and all that...

MothballsWallet

MSE_Andrea wrote: »

Thanks everyone

As we've mentioned before, we have measures in place to block spam before it reaches the forum and there are more in the pipeline. For obvious reasons, though, we can't say what those are on here.

If you can all be patient, though, you'll hopefully reach a point soon where you realise you haven't seen much spam for a while (fingers crossed!)

Thanks!

So, you've got the orbital anti-spammer laser cannons and 40 megaton strategic nukes installed at last then?