Spam

[Guest admin]

We are having a little spam outbreak. I am looking into a way to configure the board to help prevent this, but, in the meantime, please report the posts to me as soon as you see them so I can delete them, delete the poster and ban their IP and email addresses, etc.

 

As you may have noticed, the spam posts tend to have lots of links - that is always the first sign.

 

Don't worry about being overzealous or oversensitive - if a post seems odd or suspicious in any way, just send me a quick alert.

 

Thanks for your help/patience...

[AletheiaRivers]

We are having a little spam outbreak. I am looking into a way to configure the board to help prevent this, but, in the meantime, please report the posts to me as soon as you see them so I can delete them, delete the poster and ban their IP and email addresses, etc.

 

As you may have noticed, the spam posts tend to have lots of links - that is always the first sign.

 

Don't worry about being overzealous or oversensitive - if a post seems odd or suspicious in any way, just send me a quick alert.

 

Thanks for your help/patience...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I'm glad you posted this Monica. I emailed you so many times I thought for sure I must be driving you nuts. That's why I stopped.

Edited June 15, 2006 by AletheiaRivers

[des]

Me too (btw, I hate posts that say me too :-)), but gosh I have been getting tired of it. But I know you are doing your best and are doing a good job. It's just that spammers have more time and computer power on their hands than the rest of us. :-o

 

 

--des

[October's Autumn]

Some sites make it so a new poster has to have all of their posts monitored for x amount of posts/time before they can freely post. It would be a lot of work but it keeps spammers away.

[flowperson]

I believe that October's got the right idea.

 

flow....

[Guest admin]

Yeah, that is a possibility (moderating the first few posts) but I know there would be a delay before I would able to review/post them in some cases, which would discourage newbies, I think.

 

I had hoped to be able to set the board to not allow newbies to post links in the body of the post until their 10th or so post, or something like that. It is not on our version of the board software, but it may be in the new release or we may be able to code it in. \

 

At any rate, sorry... For now, just sent me a note as soon as you see the little suckers, and I will keep working on a longer term solution.

 

Thanks

[AletheiaRivers]

Monica

 

There is spam in the Other Wisdom Traditions forum and two duplicate threads in the Progressive forum.

 

I emailed you a while ago on the first one, but have a feeling you didn't get it.

[Guest admin]

Sorry - was away on vacation for a few weeks, but am back now and took care of spammers...

[MOW]

I don't know if the administration is aware of it but we seem to have had a spam attack over the weekend, some of it pornographic in nature. Please remove it as soon as possible.

 

 

MOW

[flowperson]

Monica...

 

They're Baaaaaack ! The spammers that is.

 

Just when some beneficial discussions begin to build momentum they strike and people begin to stay away from the board and discussions fall off again because participants feel insecure and "watched". Can you think of any "fix" that might help over the long term?

 

There's a lot of symbolic intimidation going on in all of this, especially having to do with the number of guest "lurkers" that seem to be around when certain members read and post. Three, six, five, and eleven seem to be the numbers that the symbologist lurkers prefer when doing their thing. I realize that much of this is twilight zone stuff, but that's the way it seems to be in the digital universe we're all in these days. I have learned to follow patterns of behavior to determine intent, and this is what I see consistently happening here.

 

I have very few "geek" abilities, but am willing to help in any way possible. If people who are here mostly because of the fragile circumstances they have endured in their spiritual lives sense intimidation, and they have been "sensitized" by their past experiences, then they will "choose" not to participate and go elsewhere. I hate to see that happen repeatedly to a place where we all felt welcome and protected in times past.

 

Flow....

Edited August 14, 2006 by flowperson

[loveapple]

I am so sorry that this board is being targetted in this way. I see there is a very unpleasant piece of spam on the forum at the moment . It must be hard to keep up with it all!

[rivanna]

According to Fred Plumer, the moderator is on vacation until Monday. He apologized for the problem and said he will try to make it possible in the future to fix these things when Monica is away.

[flowperson]

Thanks Rivanna...I thought it might be some sort of situation like that...August you know.

 

flow....

[Guest admin]

Sorry everyone - I was away for a few days. I am usually able to check in when I travel, but I was not able to get an internet connection where I was! Three days off duty and look what happens

 

I am looking for a long term solution - I will call invision if I cannot figure something out. I agree we should try to make the boards as spam proof as possible. And if I am away again for awhile, I will have someone look things over while I am away.

 

In the meantime, just let me know if you see more. We have only had about 12 spam posts in over five years of having this board, so the problem is actually not horribly out of hand, just annoying!

 

I'll give you an update when I find out more...

[flowperson]

See Monica, someone just wants you to work, work, work, no time off, no time off, no soup for you,,,,etc.

 

Thanks for your help. We all know that you're the best ever !

 

flow....

[des]

On the plus side, if there is one, (that is one the "being watched" side I mean) is that most of the spam out there is not being done by Joe Schmo personally going in and deciding to spam this or that group. It is done on Joe Schmo's computer going out and sending mass emails to various and sundry groups that are somewhat randomly located, usually by "bots". It only pays to spam if you send out to thousands of groups and individuals. If we complain to them personally it has no effect, but to alert them of our existence (I don't know that they actually know that this as a group exists in a personal sense). If you complain or comment online they aren't actually READING the comments. (I don't deny there is a random individual here and there that does this.) What I am saying is the spam attack isn't likely to be at all personal. The only exception is if we were to get say fundamentalist spam. (I was on a ex-CS forum which was periodically attacked by CS activists,very threatened with us.)

 

Of course, on a negative side it also shows the hopelessness of ever really getting rid of spam.

 

I think the increase has more to do with references from google to our group, and I imagine they are

getting group names from google somehow (not scanning them one by one for sure). If you are new

and obscure, the spammers won't find the group. So it's a sign of success. :-}

 

gmail (run by google), does an excellent job handling spam, so maybe they understand the system

itself-- how spam is generated, etc. (No I don't suspect them.)

 

As far as annoying individuals posting a few times, I'm guessing some of them might be very bored teenagers who are tired of myspace.com. The very worse thing you can do is give them attention by

responding to them. We had a person on another group posting as Wang Ho or something. He would

post in fractured English (a lot like more like a not so literate teen than a non-native speaker) and say provocative things that people would respond to. For instance, it was an aquarium forum so he would say things like "i have 60 gal tank for shark U got problem with that?" (that's a surefire way of rousing aquarists) or "U think i should get blue ring octopus?" (they are deadly) and everyone would jump at it. When administrators blocked him he would simply change his user name, perhaps on another of his twenty computers.

 

--des

[flowperson]

"There's always somethin'."......RoseAnna RoseAnna Danna.

 

flow....