Nonsense threads????

Steve Frazier · Sep 11, 2016

We have some obstacles in place to deter automated spam but I'm 99% sure we're dealing with actual bodies here and as such any obstacles I make for them would effect the whole membership. I want to keep HEF as pleasant to use as possible. Within the next month we will probably be switching to another forum software that is supposed to be more resistant to spam but I'm not sure how effective it will be against what we're experiencing.

I'm by no means a computer whiz, if anyone has experience in forums and information you think would help with this problem please contact me by PM. Thanks!

Delmer · Sep 11, 2016

fixou812 said:
....talked to Vicki Wu of Zombie Crushers China Ltd. (She not one of them )
See above.

Don't nobody go flagging Fixyou, ME, or CAM either. So far as I can tell two of them are real people, not Good Food from Austin.

Birken Vogt · Sep 12, 2016

Steve Frazier said:
Within the next month we will probably be switching to another forum software that is supposed to be more resistant to spam but I'm not sure how effective it will be against what we're experiencing.

I'm by no means a computer whiz, if anyone has experience in forums and information you think would help with this problem please contact me by PM. Thanks!

I hope it doesn't screw up the user experience. This software runs fast and light from my perspective, some of this junk can be bloated these days....

elric · Sep 23, 2016

Thanks for all the work you guys do keeping this site up.

thepumpguysc · Sep 24, 2016

YES, YES they do do a GREAT job..
In the past week the spam has been down, so somethings working..
I lost my PW on another site and inorder to get back on, I had to create another one..
BUT.. the new one had to be atleast 10 characters.. contain caps, a symbol, an under score, multiple numbers and so on..
It was such a hassle, I gave up.. and that $ux..
and even getting a pw from the mods to temporarily get back on was a hassle.. took 3 days..
Its not like your protecting your banking information, for goodness sake.!!
I was on the yesterdays tractor site this week and they got spammed HARD.... REAL HARD...

gtermini · Sep 24, 2016

Shoot I think you jinxed it. There's like 2 full pages of them this morning looking at the new posts. I feel for the mods that have to clean this trash up.

Greyson

Shimmy1 · Sep 24, 2016

They are getting after it today. They must have real jobs, because it seems worse on the weekends.

CM1995 · Sep 24, 2016

Sent around 30 spam posts to the bowels of HEF this morning.:ban

The spam picks up on the weekends due to all the college football games on Saturday as well as Monday and Thursday night football. The bastards are persistent but it takes a fraction of the time to ban and remove posts as it does for them to register and post.

Shimmy1 · Sep 24, 2016

CM1995 said:
Sent around 30 spam posts to the bowels of HEF this morning.:ban

The spam picks up on the weekends due to all the college football games on Saturday as well as Monday and Thursday night football. The bastards are persistent but it takes a fraction of the time to ban and remove posts as it does for them to register and post.

At least what they post is such gibberish that it's easy to spot.

digger242j · Sep 24, 2016

Sent around 30 spam posts to the bowels of HEF this morning

I had a busy day, so I was only on at around 7-7:30 this morning. I banned a whole load of them then, that hadn't even posted yet. I'm pretty sure I didn't leave any. Obviously, there were more where those came from... :bash

willie59 · Sep 24, 2016

digger242j said:
I had a busy day, so I was only on at around 7-7:30 this morning. I banned a whole load of them then, that hadn't even posted yet. I'm pretty sure I didn't leave any. Obviously, there were more where those came from... :bash

Same here, very busy day, it's 11:26 PM and I'm just now logging in for the day. I'll be on here for a couple of hours into the morning on my shift.

joispoi · Oct 2, 2016

I suspect that most of the spam threads are automated or at least partially automated. Generally they make no sense, but I haven't noticed spelling errors. Correct spelling + gibberish means that there's probably a text generator being used in there at some level.

I have noticed more and more online forms that require you to check a box that says "I am not a robot". Often, there is a simple question that you have to answer before you're able to click submit. Adding something along these lines for a member's first 10, 20, 30 or x number of new threads posted may be a solution. This might be a hassle for new members who want to post, but I'm sure that if there's an explanation as to why the questions are required, most people wouldn't mind. (There could be H.E. related trivia questions to make it fun. If they get the answer wrong, they could be offered a simple math question as a second chance.)

I'm not advocating any course of action. Just trying to help troubleshoot.

willie59 · Oct 2, 2016

I just logged in a short while ago and saw a pile on nonsense thread titles. Started to ban a few, and didn't take a moment that someone was a step ahead of me. Checked who was online and found Digger was logged in, figured he was the one mopping them up. Sooo, I went to the opposite end of new posts and started wiping them from that end until we met in the middle, hit 'em from both directions ya know.

digger242j · Oct 2, 2016

LOL! Yeah, I got to one, and saw that he was banned, but still had three threads showing next to his name. I wondered if I'd banned him first and forgotten to move the threads, so I went to move them and they had gone away. I was like, how did that happen??

Then I went to the main page and saw that you were online...

digger242j · Oct 2, 2016

Mods vs Spammers Live *********

willie59 · Oct 2, 2016

digger242j said:
Mods vs Spammers Live *********

THAT'S IT! :drinkup

Steve Frazier · Oct 2, 2016

joispoi, we have a couple things in place to verify humans. We use captcha which requires the applicant to list a series of unique numbers and we also have a unique question that must be answered correctly in order to proceed with their application. I'm convinced these are humans registering.

joispoi · Oct 3, 2016

Steve, it amazes me that the spam is worth anyone's time. I recently read an article about a setup in China where there were hundreds of android smartphones that were set up to be operated by 2 people. The sole purpose of this operation was to provide traffic and reviews to trip advisor. I'm not sure what the angle was for making money off of it.

Getting back to the spammers here: once a new member is registered here they can post anything that they want?

How difficult would it be to set up a probationary period where new members can't post links until X number of posts or Y amount of time as a member? What would be involved in that?

Better yet, if you want to turn the tables on them: new members can't post hyperlinks until they've clicked on the HEF ads a certain number of times. Take advantage of the spammer web traffic. :tong

Shimmy1 · Oct 3, 2016

joispoi said:
Getting back to the spammers here: once a new member is registered here they can post anything that they want?

How difficult would it be to set up a probationary period where new members can't post links until X number of posts or Y amount of time as a member? What would be involved in that?

Problem with this is some guys use photobucket or tapatalk to post their photos.

digger242j · Oct 3, 2016

We did have it set up so that Probationary Members couldn't start threads, but what we found was that so many new members were joining just to post a thread about their particular problem, that we were always having to explain why they couldn't. And frankly, as has been said above, this nonsense tends to stand out, so it's easy to weed out.

Probationary Members still can't Private Message, and a couple of other things. I've turned the Admin Control Panel upside down and inside out looking for a button that would prohibit Probationary Members from posting links, but there just isn't one there.

Nonsense threads????

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