Spammers - A suggestion for quick resolution

[SparkyChick]

Hi @Dan (and staff - @Marvo , @darkwood , @GMES , @Leesparkykent ),

Since we seem to be getting spam attacks at the moment, could I suggest a way they could be dealt with to help keep the forum clear of their carp?

Obviously, dealing with them properly requires staff intervention at the moment (deleting, banning etc.), but as we've seen over the last few days, it's all too easy for them to post lots of messages causing normal users the inconvenience of not being able to see the real messages.

I know we can ignore them, but that is a purely superficial fix.

Does the forum have facilities to ban people based on them being reported by users? That's the first part of the temporary solution.

Can the forum be configured to ignore banned users? That's the second part of the temporary solution.

If not, could it be made to do this?

My thinking is, if a user is reported by say multiple people in a given period, they are automagically banned and ignored globally (the last part may not be needed if, whilst banned, their posts are automatically filtered out).

It could be argued that this could be abused to silence people... and that concern is justified... however, I think we are all mature enough for that not to happen.

It could also be argued that spammer users could silence legitimate users using the same mechanism. Maybe a fix for that is that only members of the Arms and TAs count when it comes to this automagic ban.

Just a thought about how we may be able to provide a quick solution to the current problem.

The obvious benefit of this is that it's not deleting people, they are just banned, allowing for a follow up by staff to ensure that the system isn't being abused.

Just a thought

 

[PEG]

"Automagically" is going to be my word of the day

As for the spamming,my Mandarin phrase book,is getting dog-eared...

 

[Octopus]

Just select "ignore" poster - and then they vanish!

 

[SparkyChick]

Just select "ignore" poster - and then they vanish!

But that is a purely superficial fix. Everytime a post is made there is quite a lot of processing goes on in the backend, things like word indexing (if this software is anything like vBulletin) for searching and such like.

All this back end processing takes time and consumes server resources... possibly contributing to the faults people are having with posting (my feeling is, the fault with posting occurs because the back end is under heavy load - possibly dealing with spammers attempts to sign up etc.). The only way to greatly reduce that workload is to ban the users so they can no longer use the heavy workload parts of the site.

 

[The Ghost]

Well I ignored them, and they have not gone away.

 

[static zap]

How many of our posters ,post in mandarin - or is that racist ?

 

[Darkwood]

@SparkyChick

Thankyou for your input and views on the matter and I hope @Sintra is not too offended..

Your idea would be interesting had the reporting system been able to differentiate between you reporting a spam and you making a general report, also it is not always the case a spam report is classed as spam, it does occasionally depend on the context it is put in and the nature of the thread, all reports regardless of reason do get dealt with on a case by case basis, also the recent spam attacks are nothing new and what you seen has occurred many times over the years and what you do get to see is just a portion of what actually occurs.

What is also an issue is spam is generated in 2 main forms, one way is by using cheap labour or just a sales rep' etc who manually insert the spam by pretending to be a genuine new member and these are usually easy to stop and block quickly often before you see it, the other way is spambots and this is a bit more complex, I would suspect all the Chinese style writing spam your seeing is from a spambot, each attack users a different generated IP address and uses software recognition to create an account, these are easily recognisable as their chosen name is usually a random string of letters/numbers or each attack uses a similar name bar the odd small change, these are harder to stop and usually requires a software alteration or update to block the route as the attacks will come in waves as we have had.

Again appreciate your input and we just ask you tolerate it for a bit until we can get one step ahead again, this isn't the first attack, it won't be the last but in general we do maintain a spam free forum given the number of posts made and % of those which are spam.

 

[SparkyChick]

Hi @darkwood ,

I appreciate what we end up seeing is a small amount and I greatly appreciate the job staff do.

I've never seen spam on the forums before this recent wave (the worst I've seen was the other day when we had four pages of new posts all of which were spam). Based on my own experiences, I'd say it's going to get worse before it gets better because clearly they've either figured out how to automate signups etc. for this forum software or they believe it's worth expending the time targetting the site.

I was just throwing an idea in the pot from the perspective of a forum admin (I look after a forum myself so I'm more than familiar with the kind of carp that goes down) and how I might go about trying to make it easier for regular users to deal with. At the end of the day, most of us are working and staff can't always deal with it in a timely manner, so if there was a means by which the first stage could be automated through regular user interaction it would be of benefit to the community as a whole.

 

[Darkwood]

@SparkyChick

You're relatively a new member so that may account for why you haven't seen it before but the forum does get periodic attacks and actually got hit hard early last year and caused the obvious problems, the forum has since had a complete overhaul with a new software system so many routes and weaknesses of the old system no longer are an issue.
We fully appreciate your concerns and input here and we are discussing it in the staff room as we speak, if this was a constant problem all year around (at the level of recent attacks) then I would be putting your possible solution up for discussion but the method been used here to spam is something which we should be able to resolve successfully without the need to start altering how the whole reporting system works which could be a lot of work to implement, having said that it may be the case the forum has a inbuilt option similar to what you suggest so it will be mentioned to Admin and Dan, we have just to be careful genuine posts getting reported for other reasons do not see members been automatically removed at the soul discretion of members.
We will keep you informed

 

[Taylortwocities]

And the forum is running really slowly as a result. Almost like a DOS attack...

 

[Andy78]

Ignored but still seeing threads ?

 

[Pete999]

Ignored but still seeing threads ?

View attachment 40172

Ignored and reported 3 times

 

[Spoon]

So, sounding dumb..... what's the point in these spams? What are they hoping to achieve?

 

[Edtwozeronine]

Once the offending accounts are banned, they will not be able to post any more. That is the point of banning an account, but only OPs aka Staff can ban the accounts, and they could be getting made just as fast as they are getting banned.

 

[Spoon]

Once the offending accounts are banned, they will not be able to post any more. That is the point of banning an account, but only OPs aka Staff can ban the accounts, and they could be getting made just as fast as they are getting banned.

If this is an answer to my question then you have miss-read my question mate.

I know why they are being banned.

 

[SparkyChick]

So, sounding dumb..... what's the point in these spams? What are they hoping to achieve?

Due to the volume of messages sent, it only takes a very small response to be worthwhile. Potentially if just a couple of people were to take up the offers/services/products being touted, it's money well spent for the spammers.

There is very little human involvement once they have a foothold (normally an authorised account or server compromise - as happened to me a while back).

Sometimes the aim is not to generate revenue directly, but to get links on pages that are indexed by Google. This site appears alot when you search for electrical related stuff and it's usually quite high up in the list... links from here to other sites have a positive impact on the target sites page rank so they'll appear higher in the search results. The problem with this is, Google changes the page rank algorithm from time to time so it may not be as beneficial today as it was say 12 months ago.

But I have been contacted by a company in the US who claimed someone had posted unauthorised links on the site I managed... and they had, there were tons of them. Now spammers don't post links unless it's in their interest or they are being paid to do it, so draw your own conclusions, but based on my investigations into said company, they were a real shady operation dealing with medical related qualifications and they were responding to a change in the page rank algorithm that if I recall correctly meant links from sites on unrelated subjects resulted in a drop in your page rank... Google responding to abuse by spammers

@darkwood - I'm not suggesting custom modifications as I know what a pain they can be to upgrading server software. I was just putting the idea out there with respect to what features are available in XenForo. For instance, I know XenForo has a warning system built in (which, from my limited knowledge) is available to staff and moderators. From what I've read about the product it also has the ability to ban/discourage people. Given user groups can typically have these rights assigned to them (a moderator will typically just be someone who is a member of a particular group), it may be possible to grant the ability to warn people to more groups (as I said, members of the Arms and TAs - since we are, well the majority of us at least, all adults and hopefully beyond the childish behaviour of trying to get someone banned because we don't like them or what they are saying).

I wouldn't propose automatic removal of a user, just a ban that prevents them from accessing facilities that allow them to post. Thus, staff can review/deal with them appropriately at their leisure, but in the meantime, the site isn't subjected to a torrent of spam.

It was just a thought I had to try and improve things

 

[Spoon]

Personally I think @SparkyChick idea is a good idea.
But if the MODs don't require help then all is good.

 

[static zap]

Ignored but still seeing threads ?
View attachment 40172

Seems to happen if refresh page (Circular arrow)
..rather than re-navigating menu/
(New posts is my fav)

 

[buzzlightyear]

Well I ignored them, and they have not gone away.

they will come back even more . the big boys need a big red button to stop them .

 

[Stufin135]

Isn't the best temporary solution to make it so all new registered users posts won't go live on the site until reviewed by a mod? I know it inconveniences genuine new members, but I am sure genuine people interested in being a part of the community will understand.

I know I have been on other forums that implement this.