SPAM - it was nice while it lasted...

It seems that spamsters have figured out how to auto-create accounts and spam POTN now. It was very nice for the past year+ to not see all of that activity.

I am sure Pekka will find a nice little tool in his software toolshed to make these go away though.

One minor enhancement might be nice. Would it be hard to add a Hide Spam button at the top, and it would hide any post already marked as spam by a member or mod so that these already flagged won't show up in the threads list? Or just make it a standard rule across the board for non-mods, I doubt there is ever a reason somebody other than a mod would want to see these spam threads, the content is already hidden once flagged anyways.

Should be filtered from any other list too, like New Posts?

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TeamSpeed wrote in post #18273348
I doubt there is ever a reason somebody other than a mod would want to see these spam threads, the content is already hidden once flagged anyways.

Do you mean the content is hidden when a member has reported the post as spam? It doesn't seem to be. When I report one of those posts, the ones in Korean (?) characters, and return to New Posts, the post is still on the list. This happened today and yesterday. But the posts don't show up in RTAT, at least sometimes.

When I click on these, I see a box in the body of the message that says this has been marked as spam and is being looked at. At this point, I am not sure why the post links even show up on any thread list, other than by mods. My suggestion is that these auto-hide from the list results once a thread is marked as spam.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18273361
When I click on these, I see a box in the body of the message that says this has been marked as spam and is being looked at. At this point, I am not sure why the post links even show up on any thread list, other than by mods. My suggestion is that these auto-hide from the list results once a thread is marked as spam.

I think you're seeing the posts after a mod has hidden the content. It wouldn't make sense for the content to be hidden automatically just because a member sent a report. That is, members don't have the power to hide posts. Maybe an exception is made when a member chooses "Spam" from the list of reasons for reporting?

I just noticed something else. Another set of spammies in a non-English alphabet just appeared. The poster is "Sophia Jackson." I reported the first of these posts and returned to RTAT. The posts aren't on RTAT at all, even when brand new, but they are in New Posts.

Wow, they are going to town with the spam, 1/2 the New Posts page has this garbage now. The spammers are hitting a lot of forums indiscriminately, the same user Id can be found elsewhere.

They were at it, again, this morning... What I love about AMASS:

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lol, that is funny indeed!

Spammers really do seem to have found a way in again. I just reported another.
Last time I reported the Korean one with the multiple threads it took too long to take them down. Hours. I think POTN needs more moderators.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18273348
It seems that spamsters have figured out how to auto-create accounts and spam POTN now. It was very nice for the past year+ to not see all of that activity.

Not automatic accounts, normal registered member accounts that have not been listed to spam services like stopforumspam yet.

Yes, I'll add that the list, thanks. I have also some other ideas for detecting such spam automatically...

OhLook wrote in post #18273377
I think you're seeing the posts after a mod has hidden the content. It wouldn't make sense for the content to be hidden automatically just because a member sent a report. That is, members don't have the power to hide posts. Maybe an exception is made when a member chooses "Spam" from the list of reasons for reporting?

3 reports (by different members) as spam and the posts are hidden automatically if the poster is a new(ish) member. The only thing missing now is hiding of the thread titles in such cases.

Pekka wrote in post #18275789
3 reports (by different members) as spam and the posts are hidden automatically if the poster is a new(ish) member. The only thing missing now is hiding of the thread titles in such cases.

This is a clever feature. When the third report comes in, are all posts by the same member hidden? These posts come in batches, several posts within a few minutes, and I've been looking for the earliest post in a batch and reporting just that one.

Pekka wrote in post #18275789
3 reports (by different members) as spam and the posts are hidden automatically if the poster is a new(ish) member. The only thing missing now is hiding of the thread titles in such cases.

That is pretty slick, I like that solution.

If all threads by a user is marked as spam by different parties, could you then suspend that account?

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18275858
That is pretty slick, I like that solution.

If all threads by a user is marked as spam by different parties, could you then suspend that account?

. . . or if three different members each mark a different thread by that user as spam? If we know the answers, we can improve our strategy. Is it worthwhile for me to flag all the threads by User X that I can find, or is flagging one thread by X just as good?

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I spend an unbelievable amount of time here on POTN, and I almost never, ever see any form of SPAM. Maybe one spam post every 3 or 4 months - tops - that's it.

Hence, to me, SPAM doesn't seem to be a problem at all, and I think that whatever anti-SPAM measures Pekka already has in place are doing a splendid job.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I have not seen any SPAM whatsoever in the last month or two. Not one piece of SPAM - not one single post. And I have been on this forum pretty much constantly......to the point where I am checking every 5 minutes to see if there are any new replies to my followed posts (especially the Word Association Game). This continual, round-the-clock POTN checking - it's like a disease or something. Yet, no SPAM, period.

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