What's new
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Dealing with spam.


Hoogle

Guru
Messages
8,334
Likes
2,587
As this site gets busier so does the the spam attacks.
Unfortunately not every spam attack is as straight forward as starting a new thread saying Hello I am spam.

Types of attacks that are the more obvious 1s
Easy ones to spot
They will start threads sometimes just complete jibberish or they go into detail about something a popular 1 we get daily is how to convert video to iphone.
These 1s are quite easy to spot and deal with.

Sometimes you need to look twice ones
These spam bots will usually attack older threads and directly copy and paste previous posts on that thread normally they do this for 5 posts and then they will post a link to a spam site either as a new thread or on an old thread.

The medical web hosting spam on holiday ones
These Posts are usually dropping the name of some medical pill, web hosting sites or holiday planning sites. sometimes so subtle that you have to google the name etc.

Ok So what to do when Spam slips through the net.

Option 1 if it is a new thread started and you are unsure if it is spam maybe post a feeder sample question to them they usually do not respond if spam
if they dont respond or your unsure click the report button.

Option 2 If it is obvious spam click the report button more so if this is on older threads as we can come and delete the post and the forum goes back to new threads and current threads that are being discussed.
But when you comment after it when your all annoyed by it then that thread will stay at the most recent threads as you have bumped the thread therefore making the new threads go down and lost I know spam is frustrating but you responding to it on a thread is doing exactly what it wants your bumping it to the top of the threads for more people to see until a mod or admin deletes it. so under the Whats new threads after you have commented after a spam bot we can get threads that are 5 years+ old as bots attack the old threads more often.



If you want to talk to a bot then try and refrain it to new threads started by them and make sure you hit the report button
report.png
 

Hoogle

Guru
Messages
8,334
Likes
2,587
And on a side note we get approximatel around 100+ new members everyday and only about 5 or so will post a thread and say Hello I am new. you can see these new members by loading up the list of forums at the bottom of the page you will see a stats section you can change these stats to new members and show more and have a list of upto 200. A lot of them create accounts and let them not have activity and come back at a later date to spam so it is hard for us to keep track of every new member.

The staff can probably spot the new threads started by spam quite easily when we log on but it is a lot of work to go through all the threads and see spam posts so we count on that report button. it directs us straight to it so we can deal with it.
 

dv8_fx

Retired Administrator
Messages
13,761
Likes
4,789
Just a note to add..


There have been a lot of cases where spam links are added in by spammers after their initial post. These links are in the form of one or two words easily spotted by it's font color.

Tho all the mods try their best to find and delete them, there are a few that eludes our detection. Junk that gets added in while we're away.


Everyone's help in spotting and reporting spam is highly appreciated.


Help the PSG Moderators clean up the mess.


So CAYG .... Clean As You Go.....
 

Zeealex

Retired Forum Moderator
Messages
2,748
Likes
915
how about people who regularly report spam get rewarded with a "spam Killer" title XD naah just kidding, sorry about discussing on spam bot threads. is there any way of reporting the spam without viewing the thread? saves the extra click
 

Hoogle

Guru
Messages
8,334
Likes
2,587
no it is just the report button the obvious 1s we see but when people comment on threads that have a post previous then we may miss it they members dont report it. it does not matter about commenting as such as long as we get a report if that makes sense.
Here is your new avatar lol
1559606_340_1116081430036-spam.png
 

dv8_fx

Retired Administrator
Messages
13,761
Likes
4,789
how about people who regularly report spam get rewarded with a "spam Killer" title XD naah just kidding, sorry about discussing on spam bot threads. is there any way of reporting the spam without viewing the thread? saves the extra click

The only way to make that report is to view the thread so you can access the report/PANIC button... we wouldn't be aware of the spam post even if you make a reply or comment on the thread. Unless of course, we get to read the post.

You're action of making the report will create alarm bells at HQ, so to speak. We Mods will never miss that coz it's the first thing we will see when we check-in the forum. And even if we're not on the board, we receive a text notification on our celphones.

lol.... just kidding... but seriously, we are notified.
 

Hoogle

Guru
Messages
8,334
Likes
2,587
well you may be kidding but I do all my email comes through to my phone
 

iDad

Guru
Messages
11,578
Likes
4,467
OMG......... dont admit that..oops to late!~LOL
 

Hoogle

Guru
Messages
8,334
Likes
2,587
I only switch it on when I am away just incase something drastic happens and I am needed urgently lol.

The great thing is all the mod tools work on my iphone I was not expecting that
 

iDad

Guru
Messages
11,578
Likes
4,467
Gotta love iPhone I'm on it now lol
 

Zeealex

Retired Forum Moderator
Messages
2,748
Likes
915
good to know you are still allowed a sense of humour though hoogle, other forum (not this forum) admins apparently werent :/

but anyway, on topic
 

Shawn Gossman

Member
Messages
19
Likes
0
If I may suggest, Q&A anti-spam methods are the best I have seen for blocking out spam...

I run a lot of forums myself :) I run vb, ipb, smf and mybb. I probably run 30 of them and will run more too :p Anyways, spam was always an issue so I started trying to methods... CAPTCHA is junk unless you custom make it. The reason CAPTCHA is junk is because its easily broken AND there are services and websites out there that will solve 1000 CAPTCHAs for $1.00 USD. Then that gets put into programs like xrumor which is where the majority of forum and blog spam comes from...

Q&A is something you already have as I noticed on registration, however I think it needs to be adjusted... When I first used Q&A on my forums, I had basic questions like "are you human" and "what color is blue" and all that noise... I noticed spammer getting through. So I tried something new, I made the questions related to my forum's niche (the topic of your forum) and I made them a little hard. Some new members actually had to look the answer up which is simple to do, open a tab, type the question in search and there is a the answer... most xrumor and other spam programs will not do that, they will simply skip your forum and move to the next...

I maybe get 1 spammer every couple on months and I catch them pretty quickly.

And in the end, human intelligence will ALWAYS be the #1 anti-spam method, if you have good forum staff who are active on the forum, they can catch spammers more...

Also, there are plugins for vb4 that enable API usage off Stop Forum Spam (dot com) ;) This blocks A LOT of spammers, it really works however, sometimes it will block real members and that is just the bitter/sweet part of that plugin. I would not enable username scanning with it though as it will block out a lot of real people...

Hope my ramblings have helped :p
 

Hoogle

Guru
Messages
8,334
Likes
2,587
Well we are actually doing quite well on it I guess we have good forum staff here lol. Rarely do we get spam threads stay active for longer than maybe 10 mins. We currently are approaching 40,000 members with 4 members of staff moderating the forum and the new members. Believe it or not we have approximately 200 new accounts created daily and between the 4 active members of staff we can have 190 of those accounts deleted for being known spammers, multiple accounts inappropriate names or just hidden links somewhere.

Yes I think considering the staff to accounts ratio we do an excellent job (not me blagging there lol) However the 4 regular members of staff here none of them being the actual owner who is tied up on other projects at the moment. But Suggestions are being made on how to improve the site and stop the spam. But we can not implement anything without Big Bosses permission lol.

This site is cared for 24\7 almost But I would definately love something to auto detect all spam and delete them from our system.
 

Shawn Gossman

Member
Messages
19
Likes
0
This site is cared for 24\7 almost But I would definately love something to auto detect all spam and delete them from our system.

Any StopForumSpam modification will do exactly that for you but like I said, it can be bitter/sweet because it sometimes blocks real members. However, it blocks way more spammers than members, haha.
 

Top