Spamming the forum
 

It goes on and on!

What catches my attention is if there's a response to a very old post, or if the spammer has copy/pasted from another website (Reddit is popular for some reason!), or the post just appears to be absolutely meaningless.

Another way that the spammers try to get around any suspicion is to post a seemingly legitimate post. Anyone on the forum might look at it, can't see any problem, and move on. Then the spammer comes back a few days later and edits their post to add their spam or spam links. Here's an example thread:

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=76929

If I'm suspicious I also check out their profile, and if the spammer has what appears to be a spam link as their home page, I consider that this is a spammer. In the past I have reported this to one of the mods, but he (there, I've narrowed it down a bit!) disagreed and so the home page link remained.

We all want a spam free forum, and we don't want to be conned into responding to a post for someone whose only aim is to spam us.

Please everyone, when reading posts, always think if there's a legitimate reason for the post.

If not, please report the post to the mods.

I see them occasionally. I observer the same rules as you do. I am suspicious on all first posting that sound like testing the water. Fortunately for me it seems, some has gotten to them before I log in. I don't see a lot of them.

As a general rule of thumb I don't click on any links that aren't from people I recognize and/or I can easily examine the link to see where it is going. The other day I stumbled on a link to a site called "Virus Total." You can use it to test possibly malicious links. Does anyone know if this site is legit, or can you recommend a better one? https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/url

At work I am receiving lots of legitimate looking emails offering business services, or trying to read like an internal email within the organization. I suspect it is just a matter of time before someone clicks on a link and installs ransomware or something on our business network.

Here is a review by Trustpilot. Trust it at your risk ;)

Definitely "legit".
On Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirusTotal

I used it very often many years ago, uploading suspected malware for analysis.
I cannot remember that they had the option of analyzing suspicious links back then.

When I'm seeing a suspicious message I always report it directly. In general it's rather quick handled.

Moderator's Comment
 

When Edwin established the forum, he instituted a merciless attitude toward spammers. In that spirit, we have zero tolerance for spamming.
As soon as spam is reported we take action. So please, keep reporting.

Perhaps a service like this, https://www.stopforumspam.com/, could be implemented, but I don't know how much access to this forums' software the existing moderators have. I use to use it on my forum before I changed the registration process, and I used it on another forum that when it existed I was one of the moderators. It's probably not necessary though as this forum doesn't really get a whole lot of spam.

My observations on recent spamming
 

Yesterday, I was later than usual in checking out the forum.

I clicked on Quick Links/Today's Posts:

I was greeted by 4 pages of spam, postings of Korean gambling spam.

Quite a number of the posts had been viewed several times (up to 20 in some posts), although it escapes me why anyone would want or bother viewing the posts?

That spam had already been there for several hours, so someone should have reported it, right?

I noticed that, as well as users logged on to the forum, someone had also replied to a post after the spamming had taken place.

But the spam was still there!

Eventually, the spam was removed.

Please, may I remind everyone that if you see spam you should report it - it's not someone elses job to do that, it's everyone's duty as a forum member to report it.

If you don't know how to report spam, it's quite simple:

Viewing a spam post in question, there is a small warning triangle in the bottom left of that post, click on that and a report post page will open.

I noted those too. I opened one for the sole purpose of reported it. At the time I was here I saw 0 for views on the other spam post in that forum.

I opened one post to report it.

I also opened one to report it. Apparently the spammer was still on here because there was another post by it by the time I was done reporting. I guess it had time to post quite a few more (there was 5 or 6 when I reported, not 4 pages (but I may have witnessed different spam poop than FredOnline did) before they were deleted.

This morning on EMD:

That's a lot of guests, I wonder how many of these were attracted to the forum by the Korean spam! :rolleyes:

I wonder how:many of the guests are human. :(

Who else went and looked. :D

Currently Active Users: 550 (2 members and 548 guests)

That is a boat load of guest. :eek: