Thorn Cycles Forum

Community => Thorn General => Topic started by: travelling on May 16, 2011, 09:40:20 AM

Title: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: travelling on May 16, 2011, 09:40:20 AM
as title really
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: Fred A-M on May 16, 2011, 10:07:00 AM
I agree something probably needs to be done about it - not sure why PeteFrench was allowed to keep his registration to spam again, or maybe he simply re-registered.

Maybe there ought to be a restriction on the number of new threads that can be started by any individual say in a 24 hour period e.g Two, which should meet the needs of most genuine users?   That would both limit the amount of spam and should act as a subsequent disincentive to spammers as they generally seem to post multiple messages.
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: stutho on May 16, 2011, 04:00:42 PM
Sorry!  - I have being away from home for the last 10 days - back on the case now.
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: travelling on May 18, 2011, 10:14:30 PM
Thanks for sorting it stu
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: Fred A-M on June 11, 2011, 10:14:40 PM
This is becoming really problematic!  I appreciate that Stu can't be on hand every hour of the day, or even every day to deal with this.....
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: stutho on June 13, 2011, 06:34:02 PM
A huge amount of spam in the last 3 days.  I have added several more spam 'triggers' to try and stem the flow.  Sorry for any inconvenience.

Stuart
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: JimK on June 14, 2011, 12:53:17 PM
I was looking in the forums at www.adventurecycling.org and they seem to be getting unusual spam traffic too. Then there is the news... IMF got hacked and I forget the details but a lot of places that ought to have high security walls. Strange trend.
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: stutho on June 15, 2011, 02:13:33 PM
Due to the Massive amount of spam we are currently seeing I have blocked all  new members from joining automatically.

Our forum is partly protected  from spam by a site called www.stopforumspam.com Unfortunately this site has been hit by a  DDOS attack and is currently down.  (This will have affected MANY of the forums on the web.)  There is another similar site http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ but for technical reasons we cant use it :-(   

In the short term I will personalty reject or approve each joining member - but hopefully the stopforumspam site will come back up soon

Stuart   
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: JimK on June 15, 2011, 03:22:56 PM
In the short term I will personalty reject or approve each joining member - but hopefully the stopforumspam site will come back up soon

Thanks for keeping on top of it!
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: stutho on June 15, 2011, 03:30:08 PM
The bad news is that there were approx. 200 new member in the last 5 days - I suspect that nearly all of which are spammers!
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: stutho on June 15, 2011, 05:14:34 PM
If anyone is interest out of the 180 new members 170 were spammers - they have now been deleted.
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: Fred A-M on June 15, 2011, 05:22:14 PM
Wow that is severe, and the personal intervention is appreciated as the forum hasn't been a particularly family friendly place to go in recent days!   Are these registrations automated?  Otherwise, seems such a ridiculous length to go to for such apparent little gain and to cause such annoyance! 
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: stutho on June 15, 2011, 05:32:52 PM
The site www.stopforumspam.com has just come back up which means that hopefully I won't now have to personally vet any more applications - which is very good news - for me  ;)
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: stutho on June 15, 2011, 06:19:38 PM
The final score:

with the help of www.stopforumspam.com I have removed 533! suspected spammers from the forum (all with zero posts)
I have also removed anyone with who hasn't been online in the last 3 months and has never made a post to the list

Stuart

 
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: neil_p on June 15, 2011, 07:24:37 PM
The final score:

with the help of www.stopforumspam.com I have removed 533! suspected spammers from the forum (all with zero posts)
I have also removed anyone with who hasn't been online in the last 3 months and has never made a post to the list

Stuart

 

Cheers. I don't know much about these things, but that sounds a heck of a lot!  :o
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: freddered on June 17, 2011, 08:10:57 PM
That's all very well and good but where the heck will I get my Viagra from now?
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: stutho on July 11, 2011, 10:39:50 PM
Since 15th June there has been 2600+ attempts to spam the forum nearly all have been blocked automatically and I have blocked the other 2%.  I like this new system!  No doubt in a few months time the Viagra pedallers will find a way to circumvent our defences but for the time being things are looking a lot more family friendly.

Stutho 
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: Cambirder on July 20, 2011, 06:19:25 PM
No doubt in a few months time the Viagra pedallers will find a way to circumvent our defences

Unfortunately it did not take that long for the Tramadol pedlars to strike  >:(
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: Fred A-M on July 22, 2011, 07:53:17 PM
I see the latest spammer has 50+ posts to his name - surely this is sufficient to warrant deleting his account?
Title: Re: Any admin about to clear the spammers?
Post by: Cambirder on July 22, 2011, 08:06:30 PM
Me thinks this forum could do with some additional moderators to get rid of these spammers a bit quicker.