Advt/junk mail on this section of the forum

[Mitcherooney]

Am I the only one seeing it? I all too often have to report it. Tedious and annoying after more than dozen reports submitted. I have suggested that if this is first post then the moderators should examine it for such activity. It should be stopped. Not too difficult to write a suitable algorith, surely. BTWi reported three yesterda.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Thank you for the reports, we quickly delete posts that don't belong on the forums and ban the members as well. Our anti-spamming measures are thwarting most of the efforts, but a few will always get through.

We are continually evaluating other means of mitigating the issue.

There are many members like yourself that report posts to us, so if you don't feel like doing it, just skip over those posts and we'll get to them in time.

The ignored spam post (which is VERY easy to spot) is the best kind of spam post.

 

[IWT]

May I just but in and say that I too report several cases each day and the Admin/Mods deal very swiftly with them.

Given that you, @Mitcherooney, and I and presumably others report on a regular basis, I think the Admin/Mods do a really good job.

Ian

 

[pm-r]

May I just but in and say that I too report several cases each day and the Admin/Mods deal very swiftly with them.

I assume that you don't use an ad blocker, or have one activated for this site.

I do but it is not activated on this site and I cannot remember the last time I saw an ad or any spam, at least nothing too obvious or obnoxious.

PS: if interested, I use Adblock Plus, and normally Google Chrome (out of Date) browser.

- Patrick
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[chscag]

Patrick:

Ad blockers per se do not work to block the type of spam we are hit with on a daily basis. The spammers who pester sites like ours are always trying to stay one step ahead of any barriers that we can erect to stop them.

As Ashwin pointed out, we catch the spam posts as soon as we can and remove them along with the spammer. But it's an ongoing battle.

We continue to encourage our members to report spam posts and guaranty that we will remove them as soon as we can get to them.

Thanks for your concern.

Charlie

 

[badshoehabit]

I assume that you don't use an ad blocker, or have one activated for this site.

I do but it is not activated on this site and I cannot remember the last time I saw an ad or any spam, at least nothing too obvious or obnoxious.

PS: if interested, I use Adblock Plus, and normally Google Chrome (out of Date) browser.

- Patrick
=======

There's a difference between ads and posts which promote spam. I get none of the former (Adblock and Ublock) and report any posts if I'm an early viewer.

 

[pm-r]

There's a difference between ads and posts which promote spam. I get none of the former (Adblock and Ublock) and report any posts if I'm an early viewer.

I guess that is an advantage to being on the the Left North America West Coast, By the time I get to such messages, the annoying spam has been removed.


- Patrick
=======

 

[pm-r]

Patrick:

Ad blockers per se do not work to block the type of spam we are hit with on a daily basis. The spammers who pester sites like ours are always trying to stay one step ahead of any barriers that we can erect to stop them.

As Ashwin pointed out, we catch the spam posts as soon as we can and remove them along with the spammer. But it's an ongoing battle.

Thanks for the info Charlie.
It's too bad that such spammers cannot be more permanently blocked from posting generally but I guess that would be "anti-constitutional" and interfere with their "free speech", even though they annoy everyone with their annoying bandwidth wasting practice.


- Patrick
=======

 

[Slydude]

Thanks for the info Charlie.
It's too bad that such spammers cannot be more permanently blocked from posting generally but I guess that would be "anti-constitutional" and interfere with their "free speech", even though they annoy everyone with their annoying bandwidth wasting practice.


- Patrick
=======

I get what you mean but that's not the issue with spammers -- at least not for US-based sites. I'm not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination so take the following summary of current thinking with a grain of salt so to speak.

The first amendment to the US constitution says that Congress cannot make laws abridging someone's freedom of speech (except for some rather narrow exceptions). Similar rules are in place at the state and local levels to one degree or another. That same prohibition has not been applied to individual citizens who have some control over what they see/hear in the private property of their own homes. Similar thinking seems to be the basis for social media sites, YouTube, etc. having the same right. They are essentially private entities and therefore can set their own rules. The analogy I would draw is that if you invite me into your home and I begin trashing anything/everything even remotely associated with BC, you have every right to insist that I leave.

IMHO this is becoming something of a gray area. Many of these sites are, in effect, behaving as a sort of electronic "public square" and their practices for deciding who does/doesn't get to speak are coming under increased scrutiny.

Spam forum posts are difficult for ad-blocking software to deal with because they so closely resemble regular forum posts that members want/need to see. The forum software has some tools to attempt to address this issue automatically but with differing degrees of success because the spammers are always changing tactics.

Until Charlie, Nick, or someone else on the admin team becomes a true cyborg that can monitor the forum 24/7, some spam will get through for brief periods of time until we can manually delete the posts.

 

[IWT]

I've said before and now again; I think the Admins/Mods do a great job.

I report around 4-6 nasties every day and, as I found out, so do many others.

The spams are annoying, but they're not there for long.

Ian

 

[mfpv]

It seems to be getting worse. New user setup needs to be made less easy maybe?

 

[IWT]

Yesterday, I reported 23 in total and this morning, a further 7. If the entry criteria were so tight and involved several loops, most genuinely interested members would give up.

It's not a big deal. I guess it will fade a bit with time.

Ian

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Most of the spam is easy to spot. I usually ignore those since they are so obvious and no doubt a mod will see them just as easily. I usually report the more subtle ones. One recently was a new member asking for advice for an alternative to some apps that seemed innocuous enough, but I thought it was a little fishy so I kept an eye on it. A couple days later. he "found" a suitable alternative and kindly shared it. Mmm hmm. Fishier and fishier. As it turned out, his screen name was the name of that app developer.

 

[Rod]

I too usually just ignore them because of time zone differences but I'm happy to report the few I do see if that helps.
We had a similar problem with Zoom "bombers" a few years back on a daily zoom meeting I am admin for but a few changes to our login procedure plus time and patience eventually eliminated them. I think sites become popular targets for a while amongst groups of people who fancy themselves as spammers and they compete to outdo each other. Some of the visual stuff was pretty disturbing although you can block and report on the spot it still takes a few seconds, some people left the group because they couldn't handle it.

 

[krs]

Spam messages this morning seem to be especially bad; I have never seen so many at one time.

 

[mfpv]

I suspect the spammers know we are getting really annoyed and now just taking the ....

 

[Raz0rEdge]

As an update, we instituted some changes on the forum to better handle the spam posts and the results are good. You all might have noticed no new spam showing up in your feeds for the past few days. We've also noticed that the one spammer (and it was indeed just one) has lost interest in us due to ours measures and stopped spamming us.

We should now be able to better handle these sorts of spammer better into the future.

Thanks to all who reported these posts to us in the past.