IMs from Spammers

[keith]

All,

If you receive any IMs from spammers, please e-mail me at keithw@ceedo.com.

Copy and paste the text from the IM into the e-mail, and provide the spammer's forum ID.

[Brando212]

man, whats with the spam bots lately on this board. this pisses me off

[keith]

You'll get over it.

[Brando212]

i'm starting to see spam bots on a couple of my other forums as well now

[keith]

I kill them as quickly as I can, but...

[Brando212]

yeah, they seem to be spreading around the internet again

[cyberwolf]

When i first saw the post i thought you were talking about spammers on messenger, i have a huge ICQ list (about 100 or so ids) of spammers

Luckily on the forum i haven't been spammed lately, so i don't really have anything to report (yet ).

P.S. i think i already said it, but nowadays the spammers are not bots but real people who are paid for spamming, so most of the "defences" against bots are useless. Even i got such an "offer" but since i hate spam in every form of it (except for canned Spam as in food) i turned them down.

There is one defence that works though, a user can't create a thread or post in an existing thread until a forum admin moderates his request to create or respond to a thread. (as in, the user creates the thread or responds to a post, but his/her response doesn't appear until he/she is allowed by an admin). I know this means more work and Keith has enough problems already, but it might be something to consider

[keith]

I've thought about moderating in that way, Wolf, but that probably kill the forum.

[cyberwolf]

Well, you don't have to moderate all posts, just the first (or the first 3 if you're paranoid), after that you set a flag that tells that the user can post (he/she is probably not a spammer).

But still, it would mean a lot of extra work, and I don't know if it would be better (or easier) than deleting the spam posts

[freedompeace]

Originally Posted by cyberwolf

Well, you don't have to moderate all posts, just the first (or the first 3 if you're paranoid), after that you set a flag that tells that the user can post (he/she is probably not a spammer).

But still, it would mean a lot of extra work, and I don't know if it would be better (or easier) than deleting the spam posts

I don't think vBulletin has that option...

[keith]

I've tightened the registration and posting restrictions for new users. We'll see how it turns out.

[qwertylesh]

I honestly think that you cannot fully solve the issue without shedding all the inactive Admin accounts from the forums, maybe introducing a new moderator or two to help out with keeping the forum in order, and last but not least, have the report post feature used the way it really is supposed to be used instead of direct email. (all my 2c imho)

[keith]

I don't see how shedding the inactive Admin accounts would change anything.

The forum isn't really busy enough for more than a single moderator. Right now there's not really much to moderate.

The report post function is still in place.

Lastly, when you compare the amount of spam in the past to what we're getting now, you'd have to agree that there has been a huge improvement.