Guys, I have tried and tried, over the months, to get a response from our Moderator regarding adding at least little ole’ me to the team, since a lot of this scum comes rolling in during the wee hours, when it is my habit to peek in. I see their various droppings, am appropriately disgusted. . . but alas, I remain unarmed, not yet granted permission to use the Pooper Scooper of Power.
If only I, a mere woman, could be deemed worthy to swing the might spambusting Sword of Cleansing, oh how much brighter your dawn visits to the board might be :D. Sigh.
As I understand it, though, no SpamFighter has powers that work outside one forum—the Faith forum, I believe? And yet the vermin are crawling through ALL forums now. We need to kick this army up a notch, Moderator. Yo! Are you even awake???
Presently, we are able to kill off spam in all forums except philosophy and forum requests—uh, maybe philosophy got fixed… I think it got fixed… see I have deleted so much frigging spam lately that I cannot remember! It is way out of control.
philosophy forum is fixed. Only Forum request left for spammers to freely roam.
On a lighter note I did have a nice “session” with a spammer last night, where I deleted his spam as he posted them. 15 of them. “Oh, look a new one…bye, delete!”
I just wish it had been a real person posting spam and not some automatic postbomber…
Katie Holmes should stop touching her boobs…
[quote author=“Mia”]LOL, stormy. The things you poor superheroes have to contend with. . .
Yeah, you look at the superhero brochure and think “Cool! A cape and some colorful spandex tights!”, and then you end up mopping up after Mel Gibsons spanking session…
Visiting the board just now, 4:30am PST, the new postings list had swelled to a full three pages long, due to what looks like three super pornbots on a drunken bender. It’s like “the rise of the [horny] machines” in here, at the moment.
Is there something new going on out there, some paradigm shift in bot technology? Because it used to be only one or two, then they’d move on. Do they actually make a profit after these bombardments? Enough porn-addicted Christians take the bait and hand over their credit card numbers, so it makes it all worthwhile?
Anyway, still haven’t heard from the Mod, so I’ll have to leave it to the morning crew to scoop the poop. It’s hard to care a great deal when the caretakers themselves have tuned this out.
Apparently, step one in spam fighting involves getting some. I have volunteered to receive a lot more email about things I can do nothing about (like re-fi or delete posts). The more I report spam, the more spam I get. Maybe this is part of the training.
The timing of all this coincides with the vengeful remarks about Jerry. They will use those threads as a recruiting tool for young minds. Sort of fits their twisted thinking- bury us in our filthy sinfulness. Maybe somewhere there are kids who get school credit for doing this by hand. This is easier to believe than those 911 threads.
I watch this stuff arrive and I don’t like the way it obscures what’s new. If I’m here, it’s between 6 and 9 am EST and I would take sick, sinful pleasure in blowing them off.
Are the spam postings being done manually? Or is someone using a script to post things automatically? I suspect the former, because the spam postings appear to be a minute apart or so.
At least one of the spammers has a nickname that suggests that he or she is a Christian. If so, I find it strange that someone from a belief system that forbids self-satisfaction would post links that appear to go to porn sites.
[quote author=“Carstonio”]Are the spam postings being done manually? Or is someone using a script to post things automatically? I suspect the former, because the spam postings appear to be a minute apart or so.
At least one of the spammers has a nickname that suggests that he or she is a Christian. If so, I find it strange that someone from a belief system that forbids self-satisfaction would post links that appear to go to porn sites.
It seems that both types may be occurring, but I’m not sure. I sometimes find myself hot on the tail of a spammer, deleting spam just as they’re dropping them. These are the BritneySpears/Halle Berry/Mel Gibson etc. repeats. They come like machine gun fire, typically about 17 at a time. That’s why I don’t think these are manually done, though I could be wrong. Then there’s the occasional pharmacy type of spam, usually just lightly peppered here and there.
With the former, the tactic of attaching their spam to the end of an existing thread seems more recent. The best way to delete (if you haven’t guessed) is to pull up the “find all posts” screen from their profile and procede from there.
[quote author=“HappyHeathen”]With the former, the tactic of attaching their spam to the end of an existing thread seems more recent. The best way to delete (if you haven’t guessed) is to pull up the “find all posts” screen from their profile and procede from there.
I use Firefox ver. 2.x, so when I have it show all posts, I can click the scroll button on the link to each one and open it in a separate tab. I then go through each tab and delete each post, and after the window comes up asking if I want to go back to the thread or such, I just close that tab and go to the next one. I can delete the usual 17-19 posts in a minute or two using this method.
better yet, is there a way to just ban screen names once I establish a spammer?
I have been banned on a couple of fundy theist forums I used to post to so I know it is possible. (btw, if you are curious, I was banned for suggesting one of the top posters of the forum was afraid of peer review because his thesis would not hold water from any skeptic pov)
Other than that, I just go in and manually blast away. It appeared to have slowed down, but now I see it’s on account of HH & Carstonio’s due diligence putting up such a great force d’ resistance. Hey I try to pull my weight!!
[quote author=“dlsmith”]Also, can certain IP’s be blocked?
I’m sure it can, but I fear it would be a pointless act. Spammers usually hijack ordinary peoples IP’s, switch IP on a regular basis and never use their own.
A ban would hit the wrong people, I think.
One way would be to funnel new posters through a moderator checkpoint. You would only be able to post one post until you get an ok from a moderator. As there are always moderators here at least once a day, it would not be inconvenient for real posters.
[quote author=“Storm”][quote author=“dlsmith”]Also, can certain IP’s be blocked?
I’m sure it can, but I fear it would be a pointless act. Spammers usually hijack ordinary peoples IP’s, switch IP on a regular basis and never use their own.
A ban would hit the wrong people, I think.
One way would be to funnel new posters through a moderator checkpoint. You would only be able to post one post until you get an ok from a moderator. As there are always moderators here at least once a day, it would not be inconvenient for real posters.
Yes, I think that’s a good idea. What kind of criteria would determine approval?
I personally don’t post as much as I used to because I seem to get more from reading others’ posts than I do from actually participating, but I nonetheless find the forum valuable, and the spam devalues it, in my opinion.
