Spamvasion

[carlsson]

[SPAM deleted, poster banned]
Wee, that was the ninth spammer so far, if the search function works as it should. How long until we get the lucky number 10? Personally I can not believe the hassle to register, confirm email (are there email answering bots trained to follow links in registration messages?) only to post a message most likely soon to be removed by the alert administrator. Bulk email yes, because it is easy. Newsgroups yes, because you can reach a huge lot of people through the distributed property. Spamming forums, guestbooks and blogs however are beyond me.

Sometimes the spammer even adds a referer to some site so (s)he will earn some bonus points, strictly against the policy of the mentioned site. It is equally important in those cases that the one who finds the spam tries to contact the site so they can ban the user from that side too, even if the merchandising site themselves promote "classic" spam as a tool to their members.

[Erik]

I'm not sure what's up with these folks, but we're well past ten.

I've only recently started posting that [SPAM deleted] nonsense as an attempt to discourage new tries. . . it's not working.

Before I'd just delete the message and quietly ban the member.

I really don't mind if someone comes in and posts one off-topic message or link - preferably where it belongs. If they post a half-dozen I'm gonna get pissed and delete them all, no questions asked.

Erik

[Rick Ethridge]

I was wondering how long it would take before someone caught on. I pride myself on being able to keep most of this "TRIPE" off my machines. It's sad when they start attacking a great site as this. I recommend showing zero tolerance! RLE

[joe sixpack]

Erik i almost PM'ed you about this but then thought Ah (what can i say he has'nt already thought)

Spams sucks i guess it's just something you have to put up with.
I agree however i dont know why someone would take the time just to make a single post.

[Mad-Mike]

Please understand that I have no idea how the phpbb forums work, but I noticed that the 386page upgraded their forums a month ago, and that seemingly got rid of their spam problem. It is a shame though.

[Erik]

Please understand that I have no idea how the phpbb forums work, but I noticed that the 386page upgraded their forums a month ago, and that seemingly got rid of their spam problem. It is a shame though.

Upgraded to what? I'm running the latest PHPBB version but there are, of course, other options out there.

One of my favorites is vBulletin but it's a far more resource intensive script and I'm not sure if my ISP appreciates it.

It will import the current boards though and it's reasonably priced (although not as reasonably as PHPBB.)

Erik

[patscc]

You know, it might not be automated spam. Just think of all the poor souls out there trying to get you to join Amway. Maybe somewhere there's one of those $9.95 "work at home" lists floating around that mentions joining special interest forums on sites to sell stuff, and now there's a bunch of people trying it out. It would be interesting to see what source domain gets logged when they visit this site and log on for the first time.
Around here( Maryland ), the local classifieds are full of that junk.

patscc