Idiot Spammers

[yarisugi]

I need to stop the spam!

[Foot]

Woo, woo can we vote on it?
I already put my vote in,
NO.

[BEEF]

The spam has gotten bad lately so anything that could help with that would be greatly appreciated.

[mazilla]

Make me a mod, I will rule with an iron fist.

[Astroman]

The best thing to do is report all the spam posts. This spam seems to come in waves and will slow soon. If mods had the power to ban IP addresses it would help. Lately its coming from the same IP range.

[bronsin]

OK.

Unplug the connector above the alternator that works the VVT. Then you wont have VVT.

Hows that for a mod?

[WeeYari]

Not that anyone ever goes there, but have you seen the spam in the blogs? For the past few months, it can range from 40ish to 80ish entries per day.

[why?]

you mean someone actually looks at the blogs? I thought they were reserved for spam on all these forums.

[Astroman]

No one reports the spam in the blogs. I looked last year and cleaned a bunch up. So yeah, report the spam blogs too, even if it's through a PM to a mod.

[CrankyOldMan]

It's not tapering off. I'm doing what I can to report, but I have to wait 60 seconds between reports. It would be nice if there was a way to ignore posts from a specific user when searching for new posts.

[Septembersrain]

I think that new people who register here should be required to do 10 topic replies before being able to post a new topic.
If they get a report of spam on any of those topic replies, Instant ban.

That's just my thought on it.

[CTScott]

It really is getting ridiculous. I am starting to turn off all email notifications, as I can't stand having piles of email every morning due to the spamming.

[CrankyOldMan]

The problem is that the spam is coming as replies, not always new threads, hence CTScott's problem. It's also not spam that appears to serve a purpose other than flooding the server...

[BEEF]

You could reject any posts that have links in them until 10 posts or so. I know many forums that have that sort of thing.

I don't want this to be a forum that nobody wants to be a member of because of the requirements to be a member but I also don't want this forum to taper off because of spam everywhere either.

If CT were to leave, we would be losing quite an asset. I am sure there are others that have thought the same thing (about lessening their involvement in some way).

[47_MasoN_47]

It does get rather annoying. I used to use the email alerts a fair bit but, like CT, I've also turned them off because the spam gets so aggravating.

[Astroman]

We're doing our best but please keep reporting the spam. Only our two admins can change the registration process. What would be nice is on new posters the first posts had to be approved for the first few then auto approval after that. I've experienced this on another forum and it works! Also I still can't moderate anything in the 3rd gen area. I can ban them though.

[CrankyOldMan]

I don't want this to be a forum that nobody wants to be a member of because of the requirements to be a member but I also don't want this forum to taper off because of spam everywhere either.

If CT were to leave, we would be losing quite an asset. I am sure there are others that have thought the same thing (about lessening their involvement in some way).

Agreed. There are other yaris-friendly forums, but there's more focused information here, as well as highly knowledgeable members. The up side to the other forums is that they are regularly attended by admins and/or people that have the ability to directly curb the spam (or so it seems).

[Amdkt7]

What is up with all the spam attacks? It seems like a totally pointless waste of time. Nobody actually reads their nonsense, and hardly gets any views before the mods take them down.


Why do they bother?:biggrin:

[JumpmanYaris]

Spam!

[fybur]

The first 5 1/2 pages of the 3rd gen room is spam.

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

[BEEF]

I think it was astroman that said that he could moderate (take down spam) from all but the 3rd gen stuff.

it is getting silly. Other forums make the first 5 posts or so by approval and then you are free. I know other sites that make you take a test (i.e. read a paragraph and type in the 4th word of the 3rd sentence or similar) to prove you are a human.

I can't remember what you had to do to be a member here but I think we need to change it. some simple steps would really cut down on all this crap.

[fybur]

As much as it pains me to say they should use capcatcha :cry::cry::cry: or however the hell you spell it

[fnkngrv]

^ very true. The Bronco forum that I am on actually has pretty steep rules that include not being able to create a new thread except in the Noob area until you have 50 posts as replies on other threads. Pissed me off at first, but then again it has its purpose.

[fybur]

^ very true. The Bronco forum that I am on actually has pretty steep rules that include not being able to create a new thread except in the Noob area until you have 50 posts as replies on other threads. Pissed me off at first, but then again it has its purpose.

That sounds like a better alternative:thumbsup::thumbsup:

[fybur]

This current spam attack is ridiculous. New spam is posted every 3-5 minutes

[Astroman]

Moved this to the suggestions section. I don't knowwhy they keep bothering I really wish the Adkins would put something in place. And captcha is easily bypassed.

[cali yaris]

Spam-O-Matic is my weapon of choice on our forums. One click and the user is deleted, banned, their IP is banned and all of their posts/blogs are erased. :burnrubber:

[Astroman]

Ugh that would be awesome on here. I haven't even been allowed to modify/delete any posts in the 3rd gen section, and can't delete blogs (which 99.999% of are spam). Best I can do is manually copy and paste the username in the moderators control panel and ban. Very frustrating but I do my best to keep the peace here.

[cali yaris]

^ You sure do, and we all appreciate it.

[Amdkt7]

I too appreciate the moderators. My point is the mind blowing waste of time the spammers spend that merely annoys us.

[BEEF]

There was a user here (who will remain nameless) that actually bought something from one of the spammers. I think that put us on a list somewhere... "Hey, these people buy stuff".

The amount of effort on their part is very little as most of it is done by software randomly generating screen names and just pastes the same spam thread over and over.

[Septembersrain]

It would seem this site was almost overrun by spam.
I think it's the lax rules here.
Most sites now have some sort of security in place.

I think 10 posts under moderation for new users.
First spam caught, User is immediately banned.
and yeah, Catching the IP address would be spectacular.

[nookandcrannycar]

If CT were to leave


:eek::eek::eek::eek:


we would be losing quite an asset


Understatement of the year (or longer).

[MadMax]

Something needs to be done, there are a half dozen threads this morning started by spammers.

Either get some software in place or add more moderators, but do something soon as it won't take long until this forum is overrun by them and the regulars start leaving...

[Astroman]

Guys chill! We have plenty of mods cleaning it up! Bitching about it doesn't do anything, REPORTING the posts does! The problem is the admins haven't put anything in the registration process or limits for new posters and they (for reasons unknown) did not grant me the power to moderate ANYTHING in the 3rd gen section (tk-421 does, so I've started PM'ing him after I've done a cleansing.)

The spammers seem to know that most of us are in North America, so they hit us when most of us are asleep or in the morning. I am on here at least 4 times a day on the computer or my mobile double checking for spam, and most of it I find wasn't reported. What upsets me is when I see people commenting on the spam thread itself, but not bothering to let us know by reporting it. IF we work together and be persistent, this wave of attacks won't be so noticeable and things WILL settle down. We've been through spam assaults before and survived (remember the great iPad flood of 2012?) Spam that is easily deleted (and is taken care of promptly) is no reason to bail on a site. We survived the hack of 2008, we can survive some spam.

So PLEASE, keep reporting posts, and us active moderators will do our best until the wave lets up or the admins do something. I am for the removal of moderator privileges for our moderators who have bailed on the site, but that of course requires admin privileges. We tried to get eTiMaGo super moderator privileges a while back but Yarisbueller got upset he was on microimage, so eTiMaGo stepped down because they refused to do anything about giving us more control.

[bronsin]

There was a user here (who will remain nameless) that actually bought something from one of the spammers. .


It was me! Its all my fault! I didnt know any better! I swear! :eek:

Im old and studied Ancient Greek in college in 1973! :eek:

It was only recently I figured out what this meant! : ) (sideways smile) :eek:

I dont even have a cellphone! :eek:

So you see I know NOTHING about modern things at all! :iono:

[cali yaris]

^ LOL

[cali yaris]

What upsets me is when I see people commenting on the spam thread itself, but not bothering to let us know by reporting it.

+1 gazillion billion trillion mazillion.

[RedRide]

Do we not have mods?

They are getting so blatant with the warez post that you would have to be blind not to to notice them. They are even creating new threads with warez as the obvious topic.

It seems to me that if the mods are online and can can read a message reporting spam, they can also check new post for spam/warez regardless if they get a message reporting it or not.
What am I missing here?

We have multiple mods but, are they all online (and offline) all at the same time and the trolls just take advantage of this?
Perhaps we need a selection of mods that can cover the site 24/7 ?

[tk-421]

There are currently 3 active moderators on the team. We are doing pretty well, considering our limited resources. The problem is not with us checking the spam threads frequently enough, or the limited number of consistent reporters.

What we do have a problem of is detached admins. We have no way to communicate with them, so there's no way we can request things like blacklisting IP ranges. I've been writing some scripts that allow me to know all the spammer IP addresses going back 6 years or so. If we had a way to do this spam would not be a noticeable problem anymore.

Here's the thing I'm concerned with: Posting our limitations on a public thread means that the spammers could be reading it and reacting accordingly. Let's try to use PMs for this kind of thing instead, or open a separate channel offsite.

I'm closing the thread now to prevent any more bumpage. :thumbsup: