Stop that topsales post
 

How can we?

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

A friend of mine was about to sent them money ($300) for an n95!!
I knew immediately that it was a scam since I saw it here earlier.

I think, it is better not to delete (all of them at least) but write on them that it is a fraud..
The web is flooded with them and if you are unaware it is easily to get caught.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

Ban their IP Address(s) from registering and/or posting? :)

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

In most forums (this one included) there is a button on every post to report it to the moderators. Here on ITT, it's the small triangle in the top right corner (on the default theme). You can click on it to report any inappropriate posts or spam.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

Yeah, I believe we have done that. I, for one, have reported countless spam posts. If it is the same person, why not just ban the IP address?

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

Ever heard of dynamic IPs? :p

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

or proxies?

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

Is there some way that the little exclamation point/triangle flagging of messages can be excluded from the RSS reporting feed?

The sheer length of some of these posts seem to overwhelm the reader.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

For this spam control, I have a suggestion:

Why can't this forum "self moderate" by utilizing this "Report post" button? My idea is that once enough (something like 3 or more) users "votes" for a post as spam/inappropriate, it would be removed automatically. Requiring this "more than one" report should prevent the misuse of this feature. And, if the "spam versus good posts ratio" of any user increase over 30% the user gets banned permanently. (Until moderator decides to remove the ban.)

Just today there was one new poster registered and he has already posted close to ten spam messages... I already reported couple of the posts and asked moderator to ban the user...

All these spammers are making me mad! :mad:

EDIT: Today's spammer posts have now been removed, than God... :)

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

I kind of like that idea of automatic (without waiting for the moderator) blocking posts from getting into the RSS feed if someone has clicked the Report Post button. No big disaster if it's wrongly tagged, but we would avoid getting these cases where one post may fill up the RSS feed with a long spam message (you know how it works with the tablet RSS version.. usually there won't be many current entries). I've set RSS for ITT to read in the whole posting, so that I can read something useful when offline. But reading a long list of offtopic items for sale isn't particularly funny, when it's at the cost of something useful.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

Spam is still a big problem. We really need a more pro-active approach to stomping out the bots.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

Seeing that I spend a good amount of time at work browsing iTT, I'd be happy to help delete the spam posts and ban spammers

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

OK, the spam overload just got me thinking again.

What about throttling new users to 1 thread every 24 hours for the first 5 days?* This wouldn't stop them dead, but I can deal with 1 spam topic from some jerkoff better than I can deal with a dozen.

*Maybe less, actually, as the ability to start topics is not an important part of forum participation—I have exactly 5 topics to my name ;)

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

The immediately obvious downside is, of course, the spambots adding their spam to existing topics if they cannot create their own.

The ideal solution is to limit the spambots' ability to obtain membership here (and, as a consequence, the ability to start new (or add to existing) topics in the first place.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

I own a 9 years old forum with over 600,000 posts. The problem with spambots was gone immediately after requiring a specific word (written in the previous page) in the registration form.

Yes, I lost some real users that found this process annoying, but the non-human spam is now only a bad memory. I prefer things this way.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

<dave barry>"Non-human Spam" would be a good name for a band.</dave barry>

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

Spam Now, with less Soylent Green!!

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

I had this problem on a forum I administered and the IP addresses were totally different, they seemed to use computers all over the world (hijacked computers maybe?). Banning an IP address or range didn't really help much, the spam soon returned.

The only thing that stopped the spam was requiring each new member to be manually approved. It was obvious which members were spammers because the registration e-mail domain almost always ended in .cn or .info

However, that might not work that well on here because there are so many new members every day, far more than on the site I worked on.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

Spam's not TOO much of a problem here yet imho, it's more a minor irritation.

Reggie: Can we implement nospam! like one of the previous users suggested. The questions don't have to be changed too often and could be stored in a form filler so I'm sure posters won't be put off from the additional input required.

If it's bypassed I guess you could add Captcha verification too.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

yabbas, there is a similar spam check question that comes up during registration. Since they can bypass that, I guess there are actual hired contractors to just do the registration. I guess they then sell the registered member ids that a software takes in and post automatically to the forum.

The best thing to do now is still hitting the 'report post' link. I get notified immediately and I have means to delete all posts made theat user and ban his ID and IP with one click.

There are other things happening that you all might be aware of. Recently, a lot of new registrations have popped up with usernames and a long signature promoting xanax, viagra, cialis, etc. I have manually deleted these members. I also have made changes to the forum settings to block keywords on usernames as well as not allow signatures unless the member has at least 5 posts.

It's a lot of work but thanks to those who have been helping, reporting spam posts immediately when they see it.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

Reggie,

The same happened to my forums. Believe me, they are spambots, not humans. I defeated them publishing the required answer in a previous screen in the registration process. Apparently spambots (still) can't solve this kind of challenges.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

There was a thing on the news recently. There are offices in very poor countries where people are employed to sign up to forums, use message boards etc to post spam because it is cheaper to employ them than write very clever software to do it.

Which is pretty sad whichever way you look at it.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

If that is the true, then my problem was solved because these employees do not understand Spanish. Lucky me.

Re: Stop that topsales post
 

Blocking the IP is unfortunately of little value these days. The bots change IP all the time, possibly by going through those botnets. They may even try to post via e.g. the 'tor' network, which, if those IPs are getting blocked, would block out legitimate users that may for some reason or another sometimes have to go through an external proxy.