Spammers

[Snowhog]

More and more spammer and spam bot accounts are being accepted and inappropriate content being posted. Some of the post are pornographic.

Many other forums institute a method of registration verification - the use of a visual image with letters and numbers that must be typed in. This ensures that an account isn't granted to a 'bot' as bot's can't 'read' an image file. This change would prevent bot accounts from being registered on KFN. It won't prevent actual spammers from doing so.

Edit: Okay, I just checked, and if one clicks to register an account on KFN, the visual verification feature is being used (thank you OS), so these spam posts are apparently from 'real scum bags' who have nothing better to do than spread their filth on the 'net.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Spammers

I think the only way is to just nuke em as soon as you see them. I see spammers on the Vintage Computer Forum all the time and sometimes they take the time to sound (not successfully) intelligent for a post or two. They will actually go to the trouble of making comments about computers just to get their links in. Since the discussion is usually about 5.25" floppies, 8088 CPUs, and older OSs like CP/M, they usually sound waayyyy out of place and are very easy to spot. LOL

[Snowhog]

Re: Spammers

It's just to bad that they make it in here at all. If I could, I'd remove the posts and ban the poster in a heart beat.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Spammers

Maybe the forum needs a few more moderators to take care of that. The VCF I mentioned has a button on the posts that says (or means) "report this post as spam". Push that button and there is an e-mail alert to the moderators. The forum is amazingly clean because the bad posts usually only stay up for a very short time.

BTW: I see that the ones that try to sound intelligent come here too. Here is one now: http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...4344#msg194344 Check out the gmail account.

[Snowhog]

Re: Spammers

There's a Report to moderator link in each post. Anyone can click it and send a message to the Moderators of KFN. That's how I notify them of this crap. But, they have their own lives and while the spam does get removed, and the poster banned, it takes longer than I like to see. Hmm.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Spammers

A "report to moderator" link - right in the middle of the page? - How do you expect me to see that? OK, so I'm even more blinder than I thought. (sigh)

Yes, I don't like to bother the moderators either. Perhaps a couple more moderators who ONLY remove spam and nothing else would take some pressure off the "real" moderators. Just a thought.

[kubicle]

Re: Spammers

@Snowhog:
How about applying for moderatorship yourself, you seem to be online quite a bit (one day away from becoming the top dog of "most time spent on forums")

With a natural dislike for spam you could become our dedicated spam cop.

[arochester]

Re: Spammers

Is part of the problem caused by the timeline of the moderator(s)?

If the spam is put up by someone in (say) Russia, the US is asleep.

If I see it a bit later in the UK and "Report to Moderators", the US is still asleep - so it might stay up for another several hours until the "Report to Moderators" is read.

Or am I wrong about the geographical location of the moderator(s)?

[Qqmike]

Re: Spammers

Hmmm ... I seem to keep missing the pornographic posts (a PM from someone would be nice)

As for Reply #3, Ole Juul, that ADT Security company is one of the worst (i.e., most persistent and at times rude marketer) on Earth. When they knocked at my door once to sell their stuff, I thought I'd have to fetch my 38 to get them off my premises, but then I would have been the criminal and didn't feel I could afford the legal fees to get off for justifiable ...

[askrieger]

Re: Spammers

I can't tell you how delighted I am to see this thread! The moderators have been concerned about the increasing amount of spam we've been seeing recently. We need all the help we can get. Yes, all the present mods happen to be residents of the continental US. This leaves a gap of several uncovered hours, although fewer than you might think. I believe that volunteers from the other side of the world would be welcome.

When you click "report to moderator", an email is generated by the forum software. It is sent to all the mods at their registered email addresses. Thus, nothing happens until one of the mods checks his email. After which, we tend to act pretty quickly. Personally, I check my mail several times a day, but that still leaves hours in between checks.

When I finally collect my email, I immediately log on and take action, but the action that I (and/or the other mods) take is open to question. Personally, I:
(1) delete the reported message (or messages).
(2) check for (and delete) other messages by the spammer, that may be unreported spam.
(3) ban the spammer
AND NOW FOR THE CONTROVERSIAL PART
(4) ban all future messages from the spammer's email address. Obviously, this prevents the spammer from immediately re-registering with a different name. But, it can also cause difficulties for other, innocent, members who happen to share the same ISP as the spammer. One could argue that instead I should notify the spammer's ISP and let him (or her) take action, but I have found that this is never effective. I apologize to anyone who has been inconvenienced by this practice.

Any and all suggestions for improving the process will be gratefully received.

[Snowhog]

Re: Spammers

I can't tell you how delighted I am to see this thread!
.
.
AND NOW FOR THE CONTROVERSIAL PART
(4) ban all future messages from the spammer's email address. Obviously, this prevents the spammer from immediately re-registering with a different name. But, it can also cause difficulties for other, innocent, members who happen to share the same ISP as the spammer.
.
.
Any and all suggestions for improving the process will be gratefully received.

If one does a ban on the @some.thing portion of the posters email address, one is blocking the 'domain' which will prevent other people with email addresses on that domain from registering with KFN. That approach is 'draconian' but does work. Unfortunately, such an approach doesn't actually stop, even the same spammer, from just registering another email address, or even using spoofing services, from registering again. That's really the main problem. If a spammer really wants to gain access to KFN, it isn't difficult.

As many of the recent spam posts are using a character encoding that generates non-western characters, maybe KFN can be configured to accept 'specific' encodings. One might also establish filter rules to block posts containing pornographic web links and/or specific words/phrases that we all recognize as having nothing to do with the content of this Forum. Thoughts for consideration.

The Moderators do a good job here, and I applaud their efforts in keeping KFN as free of this crap as they can. For everyone reading this, when you see posted spam, please report it to the moderators. It's okay if many of us report. Better to receive many such reports, than to think that 'someone else' has already done so.

We are a community here. As a community, it is up to us to define, and then to help maintain, what it looks like.

Thank you.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Spammers

I am almost in favour of just banning those big spam sources like gmail and yahoo. After all, everyone has an isp and 99.9% have e-mail there so they can easily use that for posting. However, many people don't use that resource. I've even met a number of people who actually don't know how, and are under the belief that an e-mail address must look (almost exactly) like "sexygurl926@yahoo" with the obligatory dot com, or it won't actually be an e-mail address! Perhaps those people are unlikely to post here anyway, but I think many users of g-mail have good reasons for doing so. In the end, probably banning the part before the @ is the only thing which can be done. It is futile to spend too much energy in any such fight - and that's what it ends up being. At some level I think you have to accept that the world is not perfect.

In my short time here, I have seen surprisingly little spam. I suspect this is because of the hard work of our moderators. If we want less span, or better timezone coverage, then I think the only people friendly solution is to work even harder at deleting it. As I said earlier, I believe that is best accomplished by spreading the workload and having a few special "spam cops". I don't think that would be difficult to implement. There are likely a number of volunteers in different time zones and/or who stay up really late. (I won't suggest getting up early - lol)

[Open Source]

Re: Spammers

There are a couple forum software mods that were mentioned in other posts to help cut down on spam bots, but if these are in fact real people, implementing these mods won't solve too much. What is the consensus here in regards to the spam? Human or bot?

And yes, I would like to send a BIG THANK YOU to all of the very helpful moderators on the site!

OS

[Snowhog]

Re: Spammers

What is the consensus here in regards to the spam? Human or bot?

Given that you are using a visual verification for registration, I'm inclined to believe that these are 'human' spammers.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Spammers

Given that you are using a visual verification for registration, I'm inclined to believe that these are 'human' spammers.

I would think these are human too - but for other reasons. There seems to be a little bit of a human touch, or at least partial interaction, in some of the "posts". From what I've read, visual verification is already broken. Remember that a 1% yield in breaking these would be more than enough to consider it successful and worthwhile.