Spam on the forum: Poll

[Avion]

What's your attitude to spammers on this forum, and do you report the spam?

One choice only, and the poll is anonymous.

[Bamb0]

I didnt realise how bad Spam really is until I became a co-admin!!

I have had to put that site registration on ADMIN APPROVAL years ago because we were being flooded with spam......

I just reported one today. It does good.. It puts a thread where staff can see it telling them of a problem.... (Faster than them having to look for it although this site is pretty easy to maintain w/o having to be notified I think)

I havent ever seen so many people coming here trying to hide links by making them the same colour as I have here........ They are really clever OR THEY THINK THEY ARE!!

Thank you everyone for being a part of EMD

[Avion]

I just did an interesting (to me anyway) exercise, I checked each individual forum here on EMD for posts that have been made in the past month.

Result: I couldn't find even one new member post.

This seems to indicate (to me anyway) that any new members posting are virtually certain to be spammers, and extra attention should be paid to them.

There are some very obvious attempts at spamming, but some are more devious in their attempts, and we must be aware of them all.

You may think that I have an obsession with spammers, but I just don't like to see the forum being used like that.

PS: Kudos to the remaining forum moderators for taking down the offensive posts!

[CyberSmurf]

You can sort the Members List by join date.
https://www.emaildiscussions.com/mem...&sort=joindate
This will allow you to review posts by new members that haven't been banned (yet).

Posts in The Off-Topic Lounge won't show in the post count.

[Avion]

Originally Posted by CyberSmurf

You can sort the Members List by join date.

I did not know that, thanks for the tip.

[hadaso]

I see two kinds of spam in the forum in the past few months:
One kind is always starting a new thread and making a post with many links to various places were there are ads to a certain product.
The other kind make some general comment or ask a simple question, and then sometimes later returns and edits the post to insert some hidden links.
Both kinds are probably just methods to fool search engines to place the advertisers content higher in search results (AKA SEO). The first method probably expects being deleted and banned after a few hours. That's good enough for them since they repost often enough, and the posts probably stay long enough for search engines to find them. The second method looks like something powered by AI that builds on past forum content, and can leave permanent links in the forums unless the moderators are actively following edits to past posts.
All of this spam is a sort of "commercial graffiti".

[CyberSmurf]

Another one is when they add a spam link to a quote.

[Avion]

Originally Posted by CyberSmurf

Another one is when they add a spam link to a quote.

Originally Posted by CyberSmurf

You can sort the Members List by join date.
https://www.emaildiscussions.com/mem...&sort=joindateSpam Link
This will allow you to review posts by new members that haven't been banned (yet).

Posts in The Off-Topic Lounge won't show in the post count.

The above is an example of an 'invisible' link added to the end of an existing link in a quote, by making the text the same color as the background.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by CyberSmurf

You can sort the Members List by join date.
https://www.emaildiscussions.com/memberlist.php?&order=desc&sort=joindate
This will allow you to review posts by new members that haven't been banned (yet).

The above is hiding a link without adding any text to the existing link in the post (I just made some of the original link text into a link to a different website).

[Bamb0]

Originally Posted by Avion

The above is an example of an 'invisible' link added to the end of an existing link in a quote, by making the text the same color as the background.

Yes its sad how much they try that!!

[Avion]

The start of another working week, and - sure enough - there's a couple of recent spam posts, which I've just reported.

May I ask the moderators what happens when spam is reported?

When the spammer is banned, do they get a message to tell them, and/or is the email address they've used to sign up to the forum blocked from future use?

[CyberSmurf]

I assume that email addresses for users must be unique. If a user is banned, they don't appear in the Members List, but their profile may still be viewed by a direct link.
e.g. https://www.emaildiscussions.com/member.php?u=44006

I don't know whether the banned user will receive an email notification or not. When we ban a user there is a field "Reason to show the user". I doubt it would make any difference to the spammer.

When spam is reported, all moderators receive an email.
In the case of the threads that you just reported, typically the entire thread is moved to a forum that is not viewable by regular members.
Where the thread starter has returned and added a spam link and we feel there is a good reason we may remove the spam link and leave the thread in place. In most cases we would move the thread, responses and all.
Where the spammer has posted to a thread, we can unapprove the post which would hide it from regular users, or we can move the post which would remove it from the thread entirely, or we could simply delete the post.

[somdcomputerguy]

Originally Posted by CyberSmurf

I don't know whether the banned user will receive an email notification or not. When we ban a user there is a field "Reason to show the user". I doubt it would make any difference to the spammer.

Whether an email notification is sent or not depends on the forums' configuration, but most probably one will not be sent. The 'Reason' field is simply a message displayed on the 'login' page after an unsuccessful login attempt. I also doubt it makes a difference.

Note the first sentence refers to all forums software, not just this ones.

[CyberSmurf]

If another member replies in a spam thread, then their post count will go down when we move that thread to the hidden forum. Unless the spam thread was in the Off Topic Lounge; those posts don't show up in the post count in the first place.

[Avion]

Originally Posted by CyberSmurf

If another member replies in a spam thread, then their post count will go down when we move that thread to the hidden forum.

You're not winning or losing anything if you're replying to a spammer - knowing that it is a spammer. You're only really losing if you've replied to the spam thread in good faith, not realising it was spam.

For me anyway, my post count is what it is - I'm not aiming for any target.