Spam...?!

Website/Forum Support
#1

I know there was a post a few days (weeks?) ago about the amount of spam on the forums lately.
I couldn’t find it because… well, the first page is gone cough cough, and I couldn’t find it through the search.
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I know the conversation ended with the conclusion that the moderators would clean it up after a while, but this is getting a bit… crazy.
Is there a chance a reporting option could be opened for posts or members to be hidden or blocked until a moderator can decide whether it should be kept on the forums?
There usually isn’t a problem with the spam posts that come in every few days, but… all of my unread posts are now buried because of this wave of spam…

#2

Yea, this is ridiculous. I specifically remember one of the high points of the new forums was higher security/less spam. I believe in order to achieve that we would have to not get another piece of spam for approximately 2,987,323 years so that the average spam/day is below what it was at the old forum.

#3

The second page is almost gone and he keeps going…

I also don’t understand what these spammers are getting out of posting on these forums?

#4

I’m surprised this forum doesn’t limit thread creation for new members, either through a max number of threads or long time delay between them?

#5

Tell me about it…forums rules 101. Not sure how they can miss such an obvious thing. I emailed toby@esotalk.org (listed as contact on esotalk.com) and informed him of the situation.

#6

Toby was the original author of the esoTalk forum software but does not run this site. Remember, esoTalk is free, open source software and it’s up to the forum Admins to enhance as necessary and stay on top of spam. You should direct suggestions for forum improvement to Dillon ( @DRow )

#7

I did not know this. I assumed that esoTalk was doing all the heavy lifting for the forums. Thanks for the info.

#8

I’ve deleted one post from this thread for language.

#9

My apologies, I believe that was me.

#10

It’s okay, I find spam pretty annoying as well!

#11

Are there any plans for the future to prevent spam postings so we don’t have to wait for moderators to clean them up?

#12

Yes, our forum managers are constantly evaluating ways to improve the overall user experience.

#13

I am not an expert on running forum software, but I see that you are using honeypot plugin for esoTalk and its standard version is way to easy for spammers to avoid. They are either detecting well known etphp# labels or a human punches in initial login details.

Many hobby forums have one or more knowledge-domain specific questions to filter out spammers (like “what is the opposite of false in the boolean logic?”).

I understand that you want to make entry barrier into vexforum as easy as possible even for very inexperienced middle-schoolers, but there must be a set of questions that are easy for them, while making no sense to spammers vandalizing this forum.

For example:

“What is the shape of a VEX mounting hole?” -> A. Round, B. Square, C. Star, D. Hexagonal
“What is the shape of a VEX screw driver?” -> A. Round, B. Square, C. Star, D. Hexagonal
“What is the shape of this year’s game object?” -> A. Round, B. Square, C. Star, D. Hexagonal

or have a link to some useful forum page and ask a related question:

“Which motor is less powerful 269, 393, or Servo?”

#14

Here it comes again…from baetwo87 this time…

#15

ikr

#16

And now from laddyki166…

They are getting smarter…multiple user names. Good grief.

#17

I got it, but this is getting tedious. The earlier attack meant I had to manually remove at least 50 threads one at a time, on the old forum I could kill many in one go.

#18
#19

Thanks @jpearman :slight_smile:

#20

and another, we need some Admin help here.