# Where is all the spam coming from now???



## Raphyel (Feb 7, 2007)

Man this site is getting some major spammage as of recently. I wonder why...Maybe the new advertisements are bringing the netbots out. IDK but jeez....it was not this bad a month ago...I WONDER.


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## Saxhound (Feb 2, 2003)

*Re: Where is all the smap coming from now???*

Where's Monty Python when you need him?

Kim was all over the guy this morning. His posts were gone in minutes. I just don't understand the business model here - can you really make any money being a [email protected], or is it just supposed to annoy the [email protected] out of everyone?


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## tbone1004 (May 22, 2004)

They said they have a spam filter now, but she said that the member reports catch most of them. You have to remember though, there's almost 17000 registered members, plus lord only knows how many random visitors. Good place. Just if you see spam or trolls, report the posts. This forum is WAY too big to expect the mods to see every thread without missing a few.


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## Enviroguy (Sep 1, 2006)

I admin the forum on our church website. Which nobody ever uses even though everybody wanted one. Anyway, members have to be individually approved by me. 

About three months ago I started getting an average of one new request for membership every day. And even though the potential member is supposed to give their full name, address and phone number, all these are left blank. All I get is an email address from Russia or some other country with a strange dot suffix.

I figure this is some kind of new spam scheme. I believe if I approve one of these memberships, the same kind of spam we see here will show up. It may be that by posting this strange spam on public forums, it raises some website's ranking on Google. And the spammer gets paid by how much the ranking is raised.


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## tbone1004 (May 22, 2004)

people or computers that get membership, post stuff that isn't related to anything except what they're trying to sell. it's quite irritating.


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## spartacus (Jan 2, 2007)

There went another one.


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## MartinMusicMan (Jul 13, 2007)

Thank you, mods. Whoever is on duty now was on that one tout de suite.


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## jazzbluescat (Feb 2, 2003)

I'm not sure I understand, should I be getting spam, 'cause I'm not? There're plenty of advertisments around tho.


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## gary (Feb 4, 2003)




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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

Enviroguy said:


> I admin the forum on our church website. Which nobody ever uses even though everybody wanted one. Anyway, members have to be individually approved by me.


New members here are moderated, meaning an admin must manually approve their first posts in order for it to be visible in the live forum - But some clever spammers manage to by-pass that  

There is indeed a lot of spam lately to the point where I admit the forum staff is having a little bit of trouble keeping up - Lately you guys have been more efficient than the spam filter (thanks for that ) and a typical day starts-off with 10 or more reported posts in the Admin Lounge, more than half of which are spam reports. By the time we took care of everything, there's more reported spam that just got in 

If I could make a suggestion; after you report spam, if you could post "reported" into the thread to let other members know that it's been reported, that would help us a lot. Otherwize what happens is that some spam gets reported twice or more but we still have to filter each reported post one by one only to find out that a spam post was previously reported and taken care of. It kind of slows down the process a little.

Oh and we got this new spam deletion tool which does that we only need to select 1 post made by the spammer and it automatically deletes all other posts by that same user and it bans him instantly (that saves time) That means once a spammer has been reported, it's kind of pointless to report his other spam posts, and you don't have to provide us with the URL of his other spam either


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## tbone1004 (May 22, 2004)

Thanks for the suggestion Kim, will start doing that from now on.


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## MartinMusicMan (Jul 13, 2007)

kcp said:


> If I could make a suggestion; after you report spam, if you could post "reported" into the thread to let other members know that it's been reported, that would help us a lot. Otherwize what happens is that some spam gets reported twice or more but we still have to filter each reported post one by one only to find out that a spam post was previously reported and taken care of. It kind of slows down the process a little.
> 
> Oh and we got this new spam deletion tool which does that we only need to select 1 post made by the spammer and it automatically deletes all other posts by that same user and it bans him instantly (that saves time) That means once a spammer has been reported, it's kind of pointless to report his other spam posts, and you don't have to provide us with the URL of his other spam either


Thanks, Kim. That's very helpful and useful info. This needs to be a sticky somewhere.


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

MartinMusicMan said:


> Thanks, Kim. That's very helpful and useful info. This needs to be a sticky somewhere.


Ask and you shall receive ... Thread Stickied


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## spartacus (Jan 2, 2007)

I should have enough brownie points for that toaster, eh?


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## patchmo (May 9, 2008)

Yes, thanks Kim.:spam1:


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## Jazz Is All (Sep 28, 2007)

they've been coming in flocks, I reported 3 yesterday, 2 within an hour of each other. More than enough to make a sandwich and spam and eggs for a 1 a.m. snack.


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

I noticed some of you started to post "reported" in the thread after reporting the post - Thanks, that helps but I realize that some clarifications are needed:

If the same spam post gets reported by several members, all reports get grouped in the same thread in Admin Lounge - But I've seen cases where a spammer made two posts in the same thread and where one member reported one and another reported the 2nd one, resulting in two seperate spam reports for the same spammer in the Admin Lounge.

So I guess a good idea to conter that problem in such case would be to report the first spam - If you don't well, it's not really a big deal, we won't get mad at you or anything but if you could try to be careful about that, that'd be really appreciated.

Another thing that would help and that is if you can; I don't want to impose this on you guys but if you happen to report some spam and notice that the spammer has more than 1 post in his post count, go find the other post and post "reported" in that thread too - Of course there's always the possibility that while you report one post in one forum area that another member reports the other post in another forum area which, will still result in two seperate spam report in the Admin Lounge but at least we could try to minimize the amount of seperate spam reports for the same spammer that way.

One last thing: When we delete the 1st post in a thread, the whole thread gets deleted - Usually, that's what spammers do most of the time; they make their spam in a brand new thread. So when their first post gets deleted, all of what you guys have written under that "reported" or whatever gets deleted too and we don't have to go back into the thread to delete your comment aswell -- When that happens it's wonderful.

But sometimes spammers post in previously existing threads. Therefore their post isn't the 1st one in the thread and when we delete it, all other posts made in the thread including your "reported" comment remain intact - So we have to go back to the thread and delete your "reported" comment now that it's no longer needed - But I guess that in some instance we may forget to go back and delete - So if you happen to stumble uppon one of those "reported" comments that were forgotten, left behind, just let us know so we can clean that up.

Thanks


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## Jazz House (Mar 14, 2007)

This spam is getting worse. I report probably 2 a day.


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

Yep, getting worst  and I apologize for the delay today. I loged-in later than I'm used to with lotsa spam reports and poor Frank was all alone cleaning-up the mess.

***Important*** There are also spammer now that send spam via Private Messaging 

You can report these too - There's a little "







" at the top right corner of the PM

*We'll try to keep up a list of previously banned PM-Spammers here so you don't need to report those guys anymore *

Thanks for your help


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## Gizmo Hall (Jul 27, 2008)

Wow, they really seem to be out spamming tonight!


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

FYI the staff and I have banned over 100 spammers today and Frank has made some changes in the spam filter. Hopefully it will work better.


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## asaxman (Apr 24, 2006)

kcp, Yeah, I got two in the last 24 hours! First ones ever on SOTW! You're doing a great job!!! Keep it up, asaxman


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

You're welcome 

Make that about 200 killed spammers today :cheers:


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## asaxman (Apr 24, 2006)

kcp said:


> You're welcome
> 
> Make that about 200 killed spammers today :cheers:


WOW, It's getting hard for the honest folks!


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

Many of these never had the chance to spam.
But yeah, it's an infestation :x


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## Saxhound (Feb 2, 2003)

I was shopping today for a product that will keep skunks out of my yard - we seem to be overrun. It seems that most of these products use wolf or coyote urine. Is there an internet equivalent for spammers?


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

Saxhound said:


> I was shopping today for a product that will keep skunks out of my yard - we seem to be overrun. It seems that most of these products use wolf or coyote urine. Is there an internet equivalent for spammers?


Yeah, you charge a fee for membership


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## CooolJazzz (Jul 20, 2008)

kcp said:


> Saxhound said:
> 
> 
> > I was shopping today for a product that will keep skunks out of my yard - we seem to be overrun. It seems that most of these products use wolf or coyote urine. Is there an internet equivalent for spammers?
> ...


Unfortunately...that's the truth of it. There's nothing more effective in reducing spam than having to pay a membership fee before you're allowed to post anything on a website. I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that here because I simply can't afford to pay a membership fee. The majority of current members might be able to, but I can't. I can only hope that the Admins and Moderators are able to keep the spam to a minimum without having to resort to paid memberships...but if it does get so bad that it comes to that...I'd certainly understand.


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## tbone1004 (May 22, 2004)

Wasn't there talk about having the mods approve your first post before it actually got posted?


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

CooolJazzz said:


> kcp;1096011
> [B said:
> 
> 
> ...


And the downside of paid membership is that you lose some good members  Fortunately, I don't think you have to worry about that since Harri doesn't seem inclined to charge a fee for membership - Voluntary donations are of course welcome but no membership fee - I would be very much against that idea myself.



SaxPlayer1004 said:


> Wasn't there talk about having the mods approve your first post before it actually got posted?


Doesn't change the fact that spammers with 0 post count can still send PMs -- PM Spam has been the problem lately -- These 200 or so spammers that we banned yesterday all had 0 post count. We just knew they were spammers because of their IP that matched that of previously banned spammers.

Also it seems that many spammers register under several accounts and only respond to the account activation email only once they got one of their previous account banned.
But we've given them a lot of trouble by digging deep to find and ban spammers account that were still not activated.


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## tbone1004 (May 22, 2004)

Glad to see you guys are working hard to make life better for the rest of us. Wish we could be more helpful, but will keep reporting stuff as I see them.


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## Gizmo Hall (Jul 27, 2008)

Couldn't you bar the use of pms until there is one post?


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## CooolJazzz (Jul 20, 2008)

kcp said:


> SaxPlayer1004 said:
> 
> 
> > Wasn't there talk about having the mods approve your first post before it actually got posted?
> ...


This brings up a question that I have. Don't you have the ability to *block* certain IP addresses...so that no matter what name the person using that IP address tries to use...their access to the site is automatically blocked based on their IP address? I've seen other websites that use this kind of IP blocking, and while it's not perfect, it's very effective in shutting down someone who tries to use multiple names from the same IP address.


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## tbone1004 (May 22, 2004)

They do use IP blocking, it's just hard to keep up with it.

I like the PM until post idea.


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## CooolJazzz (Jul 20, 2008)

SaxPlayer1004 said:


> They do use IP blocking, it's just hard to keep up with it.


You may be right...and I may just be confused about how IP blocking works...but when kcp mentioned that they were able to identify a lot of accounts as spammers because their IP addresses matched the IP of previously banned spammers...it sounds like an IP block must not have been in effect. If it had been...there would be no need to take further action. The initial block on that IP number should have permanently blocked any future activity coming from that address...regardless of how many different accounts they tried to set up.

I'm not talking about systematically go through the logs to find all of the accounts with matching IP numbers and dealing with them individually...rather...it's a matter of a single blocking function automatically taking care of that without having to search for multiple appearances of the IP number in question. Apply it once...and it applies to that IP address across the board.

They may or may not have the ability to do that here...but I do know it's done that way on other sites...with very good results.


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## tbone1004 (May 22, 2004)

Alon has an IP block. Harri I think brought that up earlier today. I don't think they're banning IP's for the spammers though. Even if they did, changing IP's isn't incredibly difficult, and there are probably too many of them to bother with.


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## CooolJazzz (Jul 20, 2008)

SaxPlayer1004 said:


> Alon has an IP block. Harri I think brought that up earlier today. I don't think they're banning IP's for the spammers though. Even if they did, changing IP's isn't incredibly difficult, and there are probably too many of them to bother with.


Well, you're right...IP blocking only works against static IP addresses...and truly professional spammers are probably changing their IP addresses on a regular basis. It was just a thought after seeing kcp mention multiple spammer accounts using the same IP number.


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

Gizmo Hall said:


> Couldn't you bar the use of pms until there is one post?


That's something we been discussing but I think that the reason why it wasn't done already is that there is no easy way to do it (I sure went to look for a way to do it) - Simply put, we can turn on or off the entire PM system or we can assign different PM privilege to different usergroup.
What happens is that once someone receives the email confirmation and clicks on the link to activate the account, that user automatically becomes part of the Registered usergroup (the greater majority of the membership is in that group) - So to stop 0 post count members from sending PMs, we'd have to make the registered usergroup without PM privilege and then move and inspect (verify IPs etc) every single members with more than 1 post already in the registered usergroup one by one to be moved into another registered usergroup which has PM privileges... So, in other words, it's a lot of work :| I guess that the forum was set up that way for such a long time that now it's kind of too late to make changes like that.



SaxPlayer1004 said:


> Alon has an IP block. Harri I think brought that up earlier today. I don't think they're banning IP's for the spammers though. Even if they did, changing IP's isn't incredibly difficult, and there are probably too many of them to bother with.


Indeed we do occasionally ban IPs. But the problem with banning IPs is that we may accidentally block some people that we don't want to. And since several spammers nowadays fake IPs, it's kind of pointless. And then, there are those clever people who figured out a way to by pass IP bans.


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## tbone1004 (May 22, 2004)

Wait. So idea. borrowed from the woodwind forum. Set a new usergroup. 

Have a Junior Member group.
*No PM's
*First post has to be in the new member section *just seems like a good idea.
*First 10 or so posts have to be approved by mods. *This should keep people like Alon out for good, and also keep the spammers out that might slip by.


After say 10 approved posts you move them into the main usergroup with normal privileges. *which does not have a D in it btw, after the third time of misspelling it. 
But this might help keep the spammers down, would eliminate PM disasters. Makes a bit more work for you per member, but should help slow down or stop the spam problem.


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## Gizmo Hall (Jul 27, 2008)

Couldn't you assume that the members who already have posts under their belts are not going to be sending spam, and separate them as one user group. Then, create a new user group for those with less than one post.

On a similar note, how do you define the user groups? Can the definitions be changed in such a way as to allow some certain privileges and others no?


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

Of course members that already have several posts under their belt are for sure not spammers. But there are a lot of 0 post count members which are genuine members too.

As far as the WForum goes, they have the benefit that they set-up their forum like that from the beginning. Plus they got only a few hundred members - We got several thousands of members which makes it more difficult to turn back on a dime for this sort of thing, however it is not impossible.

This said, I realize that I may have given you the impression that PM Spam is a big problem but to clarify, it's not that big of a problem. We just noticed that PM Spam was now being reported more often in the last weeks. That rarely if ever happened before.

Actually what we been doing in the last week is to make it harder for spammers to register to the forum -- Those 200 or so spammers that we banned were those that we found that were already in the system -- It seems to have worked. I can tell by looking at our online members list. A couple days ago I could spot spammers (judging by their usernames) online where it said "registering" next to their names. Now I see none of that. Now, in contrast, I've seen quite many "guests" online, trying to register and getting an error message.

There likely are many other spammers in the membership which we haven't spotted yet but there sure are a lot less and I think that makes a significant difference.


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## tbone1004 (May 22, 2004)

I know we have a much larger member system, and I know the problem isn't that large, but it's still a problem, and therefor work that you guys shouldn't have to put up with. I was just browsing over there and figured I'd let the suggestion out.


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## martysax (Oct 13, 2004)

SaxPlayer1004 said:


> I know we have a much larger member system.


We, as sax players, have the largest members.


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

SaxPlayer1004 said:


> I know we have a much larger member system, and I know the problem isn't that large, but it's still a problem, and therefor work that you guys shouldn't have to put up with. I was just browsing over there and figured I'd let the suggestion out.


No problem. All suggestions are good. I'm just answering questions and explaining a bit how things are set-up here because you guys are showing interest. _(until Marty came along)_:twisted:


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## martysax (Oct 13, 2004)

The spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, eggs and spam doesn't have too much spam in it.


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## Jazz House (Mar 14, 2007)

^ Is that a joke? :?  Reported


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## Zannad (Jun 11, 2008)

Ok, I blame myself here....
I've started some threads and then I've posted some links and info for possible buyers...then some other seller did the same.
How can I delete certain posts? (Included mine of course...)


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## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

Zannad said:


> Ok, I blame myself here....
> I've started some threads and then I've posted some links and info for possible buyers...then some other seller did the same.
> How can I delete certain posts? (Included mine of course...)


To clarify: Spam is unscolicited ads, mostly irrelevant and redundant, links to suspicious web sites or contains porn or again is used to collect email adresses.

This said, if you'd still like to get certain posts deleted that, for instance contain email or personal information (phone number, and such) about yourself or someone else, then find the posts you'd like to have deteted and click on the report icon (







) at the bottom left of the post - A forum Admin will see to it.


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## Prime Sax (Nov 14, 2006)

martysax said:


> We, as sax players, have the largest members.


I'm gone for a couple of years and martysax hasn't changed. It's the only sure thing besides death and taxes.


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