Spam

Discussion in 'Site Feedback and News' started by PBSNellie, Jan 8, 2019.

  1. PBSNellie

    PBSNellie Well-Known Member

    Jul 7, 2013
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    Why is this site so susceptible to spam lately? There's some right now (1/8/19-Arabic writing). It seems that the site is getting a lot more spam recently than it used to. Just curious. Thx.
     
  2. David1953

    David1953 Well-Known Member

    May 26, 2013
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    I noticed it as well, and there are pages and pages of it every single day, especially earlier in the morning. Today, though, it's still there even in the afternoon. I was thinking of posting about it to complain, but you beat me to it.

    On the old site, they used to have people called the "spam police", who kept an eye on things and deleted spam almost as soon as it showed up.
     
  3. squarezero

    squarezero Moderator
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    Dec 10, 2008
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    We still have a spam police. The real issue has been the volume: it’s not unusual to get over a thousand spam threads in the span of half and hour, and that’s not even counting all the messages that automatically go into moderation. Even with the better moderation tools on the new website (and trust me, they’re a lot better) it can be hard to keep up, especially during the holidays when not everyone is available.

    Now that the holidays are over, I expect that things will ease up a bit.
     
  4. Nullzone

    Nullzone 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Jul 12, 2013
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    Like squarezero says, the problem is the volume.
    I still think there's an open exploit somewhere on the site: some spammers manage to drop 100+ post in the span of 15-30 minutes. Which is not possible for a "normal" user, due to an imposed timelimit between posts. And we definitely didn't have that issue with the old site version.

    By now, it's gotten so annoying, that a blanket blacklist - or even a whitelist approach for allowed email providers - looks like a good idea.
    Oh, and of course blacklist content filters, please? It's in Chinese or Hindi? Out you go right away...
     
  5. PBSNellie

    PBSNellie Well-Known Member

    Jul 7, 2013
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    There seems to be a lot of Arabic, as well.
     
  6. saansilt

    saansilt 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Mar 23, 2013
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    Sorry folks, just came back. I'll resume my daily watch.
     
  7. David1953

    David1953 Well-Known Member

    May 26, 2013
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    I think that Nullzone has some really good points, to block all posts that are Hindu, Chinese, and Arabic as well, as the OP pointed out. Surely the option to use at least some kind of filter to cut down on the work for the spam police would be an excellent idea.

    There are eight full pages of spam on one of the threads this morning, and the situation seems to be getting worse.
     
  8. NyxTowa

    NyxTowa Well-Known Member
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    Nov 13, 2018
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    #8 NyxTowa, Feb 1, 2019
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2019
    Does the forum have any anti spam plugins installed or just the default anti spam prevention?

    This would be a question for the admins here

    Maybe https://cleantalk.org/ could be a solution?

    anyways i will try do my part to report spam
     
    Dave Wells likes this.
  9. arn

    arn Administrator
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold

    Apr 19, 2008
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    Sorry... spam has been awful. Made some changes that hopefully will help.
     
    Coldar, David1953 and NyxTowa like this.
  10. David1953

    David1953 Well-Known Member

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    I don't want to jinx anything by mentioning it, but I noticed that the spam situation is much better this morning. In fact, in the forum group, "General Game Discussions and Questions", which was the worst affected group in the past, didn't seem to have one spam in when I looked at it just now.

    I'm keeping my fingers crossed, arn, that what you did was what did the trick.
     
  11. squarezero

    squarezero Moderator
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    As part of the cleanup crew, I can very much agree with this. Thanks Arn for whatever you did!
     
  12. DeNappa

    DeNappa Well-Known Member
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    Oct 1, 2013
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    I guess they worked around it already :D
     
  13. Coldar

    Coldar Well-Known Member

    Dec 26, 2008
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    Yea, every time I'd pop in it was filled with spam. Now I haven't seen much. If at all.
     
  14. David1953

    David1953 Well-Known Member

    May 26, 2013
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    The Chinese spam has returned this morning, although there isn't as much of it as there was a few months back. There's about half a page of it, as opposed to multiple pages back then.
     
  15. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
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    Yeah it’s all gone now. I don’t think it’s that bad as we have spam police in different time zones. I woke up later today or I would have deleted it earlier
     
  16. David1953

    David1953 Well-Known Member

    May 26, 2013
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    Oddly, I'm still seeing about a half a page of Chinese spam in the "General Game Discussions" forum, on two different devices. I refreshed the page, and it's still there.
     
  17. squarezero

    squarezero Moderator
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    Dec 10, 2008
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    Yeah — we missed a set. Take care of now.
     
    David1953 likes this.
  18. David1953

    David1953 Well-Known Member

    May 26, 2013
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    Thank you, it's gone now.
     
  19. saansilt

    saansilt 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Mar 23, 2013
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    I have to say, you guys run a stinkin tight ship here. Shake about Indian ip addresses, but c’est la vie.
     

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