Spammers

TheLastGreen

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I see we have a spammer for certain health products that just keeps coming back and back, for almost 2 to 3 weeks.
Is there a way that the admins could perhaps add a blacklist for certain words?
Could you guys ban the person's IP address?
Introduce a Captcha when creating an account? (I can't even remember if I had done one when I created my account)
(I don't want to sound like it's an easy fix or that I know everything about tech, which I don't, but I can't think it's nice for the mods or admins to see the same message everyday?)
What do the mods/admins think about the suggestion?
 

ZEROPILOT

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I see we have a spammer for certain health products that just keeps coming back and back, for almost 2 to 3 weeks.
Is there a way that the admins could perhaps add a blacklist for certain words?
Could you guys ban the person's IP address?
Introduce a Captcha when creating an account? (I can't even remember if I had done one when I created my account)
(I don't want to sound like it's an easy fix or that I know everything about tech, which I don't, but I can't think it's nice for the mods or admins to see the same message everyday?)
What do the mods/admins think about the suggestion?
I've only been a moderator here for about 12 hours
But in the other forums I moderate, the spammers are very persistent. They do vast carpet postings of a dozen or more. And always there are a few that get past our latest and most up to date attempts to block all of them.
In one instance just overnight we had over 200 spam posts. All from China. All very similar but worded slightly differently.
Thankfully most spam posts are obvious.
Scam posts are a little more difficult sometimes.
We have two new moderators now in a US time zone that wasn't represented before. So hopefully we can keep more spam out while some other parts of the world are sleeping.
 

MEEJogja

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This seems to be the case again now. weight loss pills and CBD products galore. Am I imagining it or when I first joined did I need to post to the introductions forum and reply to 10 threads or something before I could start my own thread elsewhere? Maybe this could be brought back in so they cannot just immediately create a public post which hits the keywords they want.
 

Maggie3fan

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This seems to be the case again now. weight loss pills and CBD products galore. Am I imagining it or when I first joined did I need to post to the introductions forum and reply to 10 threads or something before I could start my own thread elsewhere? Maybe this could be brought back in so they cannot just immediately create a public post which hits the keywords they want.
Normally the mods look for that first...I am always screaming for a mod to get rid of them...Now that cbd is legal in most states there's a lot of ads for that...
 

wellington

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Wow, we do what we can and get them when we see them.
Just ignore them and move on and eventually they will be deleted and banned.
 

MEEJogja

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Wow, we do what we can and get them when we see them.
Just ignore them and move on and eventually they will be deleted and banned.
I'm not complaining about the good work the mods put in @wellington - I just thought perhaps this influx was due to a security setting being relaxed somewhere along the way and raising it might make your lives easier 🙏
 

Pistachio's Pamperer

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The spammers usually hit between 2am-4am my time. I hit the report button the minute I see it and put SPAM in the “reason” section. And as ppl have stated it’s diet supplements and cbd products most regularly. It’s also usually them hitting the boards Thursday-Sunday.
Don’t know if that info helps but figured I would share what I have noticed.

“Get off my lawn.”- is what it makes me feel like. But I think most ways that would be easy to “rid” ourselves of them might scare off new ppl who are maybe in states of emergency looking for help for their animals. Or who have already had issues on Facebook or other sites and are just looking for friendly faces. Sooo unfortunately I think the best course of action is going to have to be to just deal with it and continue to hit that report button.

Depending on the agency they work for they are either getting paid by the number of “posts” they make across sites-they screen shot them for proof. Or they get paid based on “click-through” traffic; if that’s the case: US not clicking on their junk will eventually get rid of them.

-Meg
 

Yvonne G

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When we delete the daily spams we ban that username and IP, however, because of the 'sameness' of the post content, my guess is that the companies that hire these people just provide them with different usernames and IPs, because they're back again the next day with a different username.
 

MEEJogja

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When we delete the daily spams we ban that username and IP, however, because of the 'sameness' of the post content, my guess is that the companies that hire these people just provide them with different usernames and IPs, because they're back again the next day with a different username.
A client of mine recently paid a marketing agency (fancy London based offices type affair) for SEO, hoping to get their site high up on Google for certain search terms. They produced a report of what they had done and I told my client to query one of the points as they were very expensive and it was very vague.

Suddenly the person who responded to the query was not London based but distinctly South Asian. He provided a spreadsheet of links to hundreds of forum posts they had posted to completely unrelated sites, full of gibberish, containing our keywords and the company name.

Google sees 'lots of people talking about' a subject and mentioning your company name and decides it is particularly relevant and should rank highly.

Most of the forums and blogs he sent links to were super sketchy and clearly just set up to accommodate spam, others were random forums like this one, and many posts had already been deleted.

Someone is billing their client for spam posted to this forum, and unfortunately it is probably serving its purpose to them.
 

wellington

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I'm not complaining about the good work the mods put in @wellington - I just thought perhaps this influx was due to a security setting being relaxed somewhere along the way and raising it might make your lives easier 🙏
Only @Josh I believe can fix or bump up any of the security to stop them.

They are a pain, but there is little mods can do but to ban them once we do find them. We do get alerts on them. Not sure why/how they aren't being stopped before hand.
 

Cathie G

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I'm not on a computer. I go through my email to connect to TFO on my phone. I don't get spam at all. Maybe it's not the site itself but the device and the internet supplier that lets it in.🤷
 

wellington

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I'm not on a computer. I go through my email to connect to TFO on my phone. I don't get spam at all. Maybe it's not the site itself but the device and the internet supplier that lets it in.🤷
I only use my phone too. Individuals are not getting spam, the forum gets it.
 

Cathie G

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I'm not complaining about the good work the mods put in @wellington - I just thought perhaps this influx was due to a security setting being relaxed somewhere along the way and raising it might make your lives easier 🙏
Do you get spam?
 

Yvonne G

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I'm not on a computer. I go through my email to connect to TFO on my phone. I don't get spam at all. Maybe it's not the site itself but the device and the internet supplier that lets it in.🤷
The spam threads are showing up as regular posts, not advertising on the Forum.
 

Maro2Bear

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Maybe….it would be good to show a nice Red Flag on a post once it’s been “reported as spam” to the mods. I get up early here in MD & see & report a ton, but…I’m never sure if they have been already “reported”.

Reason for reporting - SPAM - ❌
 

TheLastGreen

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I think what's also important is that we need a mod in a European time zone. Like @Pistachio's Pamperer said, they post early in US time, but meanwhile it's 9 am by me and I easily see at least 4 spam threads. On other extreme days it could easily reach 8. I usually wait and see a few hours later that mods are awake and the posts are gone.
We need a "ban hammer". A member who's only responsibility as mod is to delete spam posts. The member should as stated be in a time zone which is earlier than the US, so it would most likely be a member in the European time zones
 

Cathie G

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The spam threads are showing up as regular posts, not advertising on the Forum.
Oh. Ok. Maybe I've accidentally not looked at one of those 😊 well...if they're spam what are they trying to get?🤔
 

MEEJogja

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I think what's also important is that we need a mod in a European time zone. Like @Pistachio's Pamperer said, they post early in US time, but meanwhile it's 9 am by me and I easily see at least 4 spam threads. On other extreme days it could easily reach 8. I usually wait and see a few hours later that mods are awake and the posts are gone.
We need a "ban hammer". A member who's only responsibility as mod is to delete spam posts. The member should as stated be in a time zone which is earlier than the US, so it would most likely be a member in the European time zones
My company has a 24/7 helpdesk. I would offer them up if I didn't suspect them of pretty much sleeping through their entire shifts 🤣
 

MenagerieGrl

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Oh. Ok. Maybe I've accidentally not looked at one of those 😊 well...if they're spam what are they trying to get?🤔
So, ALL the Mod's are doing a good (great) job . . . I have not seen ANY spam posts or ad's, that or I don't know what I'm looking at. Thank you, Thank you, thank you!

@Cathy G ,the spammers are trying to get you to click on their link, fooling you to think they are a legitimate company.
I believe they want your Credit Card info. for more fraud.
 

Cathie G

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So, ALL the Mod's are doing a good (great) job . . . I have not seen ANY spam posts or ad's, that or I don't know what I'm looking at. Thank you, Thank you, thank you!

@Cathy G ,the spammers are trying to get you to click on their link, fooling you to think they are a legitimate company.
I believe they want your Credit Card info. for more fraud.
Well...If they can figure out my stuff they're doing better than me 😁in the first place and I need lessons from them 😂. But I haven't really seen any companies trying that here at all. If I was going to buy something I would go to my established sites anyway not just click.
 
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