• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Update on spam threads
2 2

29 posts in this topic

  • Administrator

Due to the recent spike in spam activity, we've made an update to the boards that hides posts from new members until a moderator has reviewed and approved them. Once a moderator has approved a post by someone, that person will be able to post freely from that point forward, without a moderator needing to intervene.

Good News: That means you shouldn't see any more Korean / Chinese / etc spam threads! :foryou:

Bad News: Making legitimate new users wait to have their posts published isn't our favorite thing in the world.

We're working on other solutions to prevent robots from creating accounts / make posts at all, but those updates will  take longer to get done. Once they're done though, we should be able to remove the restriction on new members and put things back the way they were before :wishluck:

Thanks for your patience and for doing such a good job of reporting the spammers to us!

Scott

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Scott =) said:

Due to the recent spike in spam activity, we've made an update to the boards that hides posts from new members until a moderator has reviewed and approved them. Once a moderator has approved a post by someone, that person will be able to post freely from that point forward, without a moderator needing to intervene.

Good News: That means you shouldn't see any more Korean / Chinese / etc spam threads! :foryou:

Bad News: Making legitimate new users wait to have their posts published isn't our favorite thing in the world.

We're working on other solutions to prevent robots from creating accounts / make posts at all, but those updates will  take longer to get done. Once they're done though, we should be able to remove the restriction on new members and put things back the way they were before :wishluck:

Thanks for your patience and for doing such a good job of reporting the spammers to us!

Scott

Thank You, and I am always available to offer my negotiation skills in these trying times.:acclaim:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrator

Note: You could still see spam thread(s) if a spammer created an account in the past and has already made other posts with it. Possible, but unlikely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

is there a way you could make a new member jump through a few hoops to prove they are a person (like the picture tests or whatever) or type in some weird characters they see on the screen before they're even allowed to make an account?  I don't know if that will help depending on the type of spammer, just throwing it out there. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrator

Yes, that's one of the options we're exploring (thumbsu

The delicate part is making sure that those types of obstacles aren't too hard for real people. Those puzzles can lead to a lot of frustration / complaints / etc, but newer versions of the technology are better and could make that a non-issue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Eventually the bots will attain AI and then we're all doomed to a flood of fake diploma's, IDs, male enhancement products, and cheap british kitchens 

Edited by Jerkfro
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎7‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 8:59 AM, revat said:

is there a way you could make a new member jump through a few hoops to prove they are a person (like the picture tests or whatever) or type in some weird characters they see on the screen before they're even allowed to make an account?  I don't know if that will help depending on the type of spammer, just throwing it out there. 

Well best Captcha ever

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/19/2018 at 8:07 AM, Jerkfro said:

Eventually the bots will attain AI and then we're all doomed to a flood of fake diploma's, IDs, male enhancement products, and cheap british kitchens 

It's funny cause its TRUE!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrator

Update:

We made some adjustments late last week:

  1. Posts by new members will show up immediately. They no longer require moderator approval.
  2. Members cannot use the chat boards until their email address is verified. This mainly applies to new members, but would also apply to existing members who update their email address on file.
  3. New members can only post 3 times in the first 24 hours after initially visiting the boards.

So far, so good. So no Captcha for now ^^

If we see spammer activity spike back up again, we'll consider additional measures to help keep them at bay.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, cgcmod8 said:

I have banned some.  Please report any scammers.   

There are still a whole bunch of threads remaining in several Forums...

Edited by Gotham Kid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrator
3 hours ago, Gotham Kid said:

They're back !

Thanks for the heads up! They're banned and their threads are now hidden.

I've also fixed an issue in the admin settings that was allowing new users to post 5 times in the first day instead of 3. They'll now only be able to post 3 times.

The spammers picked a good time to show back up. Ordinarily, moderators can ban a user and a background process will automatically hide their content a few minutes later. Unfortunately, there's a large background process running (search index) that will prevent any other process from running until it's done. It should be done in about 2 days.

That means that moderators need to ban each user and also manually hide each thread in order for the content to disappear promptly. As you might imagine, this makes the process more tedious for moderators.

We'll continue to monitor this, and evaluate whether we should reinstate admin approval for posts from new users or add some other protection.

Thanks everyone for your patience.

spam.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
2 2