New wave of comment spammers, please don't reply to them or click included links

[Danneaux]

Hi All!

The last couple weeks, the Forum has been inundated by wave after wave of comment spammers, all based in Russia. They manually register, then upload posts that sometimes look like gibberish because we don't have Cyrillic language packs installed, so symbols and characters are substituted instead. The idea behind comment spammers is to upload random text (it rarely has anything to do with the Forum's usual topics) and include links they hope viewers will click on. Those who take the bait are then transported to a homepage that sells products at least or can install malware at worst.

Please don't click on these spammers' links.

I check the Forum frequently during the day and am addressing these spam posts as soon as I can. If a spammer's topic stays up for awhile, it is probably because I am asleep (the UK is 8 hours ahead of my time zone, Russia 10), working at my consulting job, or cycling out of celltower range in remote areas so some posts may stay up for several hours until I can ban the user and pull the topic. If Forum members reply to the topic, those comments will be removed with the spammer's topic, so best to not reply. It is possible I might miss a post so if one stays up beyond several hours, please report it and I'll receive an email flagging it to my attention.

If this wave of comment spammers continues I will need to take some further measures I won't detail here.

Thanks for your patience while I work on this problem.

Best,

Dan.

Thorn Cycling Forum Administrator

[energyman]

Good on yer Dan - thanks.

[lewis noble]

Thanks Dan, for the advice on this and the work you are doing.

I am aware of the danger of clicking on a link in an email of this sort . . . . and I have been hesitant about clicking on these obviously messages at all.  But if you don't click on the initial message, you get the thing popping up every time you go on 'unread messages', my usual access to the Forum, which is pretty irritating and distracting.

Can I take it that 'opening' messages like this to get rid of them is ok? just avoid any link clicking.

Thanks again

Lewis

[Danneaux]

Can I take it that 'opening' messages like this to get rid of them is ok? just avoid any link clicking.

Yes, on both counts, Lewis.

I've got things setup so no executibles appear on the Forum, but clicking one of the included links would take you away from our safe little shire to Other Places where things are sometimes not so nice. 

Clicking on the topic to remove it from your "unread messages" queue will be safe.

All the best,

Dan.

[Rockymountain]

Thanks, Dan, for the heads-up. And thank you for all your work with this forum. It’s greatly appreciated.

Fraser