Local Superstar

Answered

Yet more SPAM

17 replies
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It’s been a while but now the SPAM bots are out in force, over 20 posts this morning alone. HAve the filters been removed?

spam

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James L.Answer

Retired Community Staff

Hi @bockersjv,

The filters haven’t been removed, but it looks like we’ve been targeted in this new wave of spam. The filters are catching most of it, but some do slip through which we’re keeping on top of.

If you do see a topic that has been up for a while that’s obvious spam, we’d appreciate it if you could flag it for attention :slight_smile:

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

Show previous replies

Airgetlam

They do seem to specialize in finding times the forum moderators are not around…or at least, that’s when we see them, not having visibility of all the efforts made when the moderators catch them quickly.

Bruce

buzz

Grand Maestro

There are moderators in various time zones. UT 03:00 and 11:00 plus or minus a couple hours seem to be popular timeframes for the spammers. I don’t know if this is a single spammer or a gang and it could be that spammers operate as a business and these are normal business hours or if the spammers have determined that moderator coverage is thin at particular times of day.

There are other possibilities. These spams could be posted by forgotten bots or a SONOS competitor is attempting to disrupt things. There seems to be some regularity to some of the user names. The first few characters of the names can be similar -- almost as if the spammer has a signature.

Airgetlam

Amusing, as your own post contains a spam link in it, which I’ve flagged for a forum moderator to adjust.

Bruce

Mr. T

…Once a spammer is flagged, future post attempts by that spammer will be blocked. After all of the currently active spammers are blocked, then you can return and flag the remaining posts by each spammer. Of course this strategy cannot prevent the spammer from establishing new accounts, but it will throttle more repeat posts by spammer ‘B’ while you are still flagging posts from spammer ‘A’.

I wish that was true but reporting a spammer does not instantly block them from making further posts under the same account.

melvimbe

…Once a spammer is flagged, future post attempts by that spammer will be blocked. After all of the currently active spammers are blocked, then you can return and flag the remaining posts by each spammer. Of course this strategy cannot prevent the spammer from establishing new accounts, but it will throttle more repeat posts by spammer ‘B’ while you are still flagging posts from spammer ‘A’.

I wish that was true but reporting a spammer does not instantly block them from making further posts under the same account.

Well of course. It would need a moderator to validate that it actually is a spammer, and not one user trying to getting another user banned without cause.

Danny

Mr. T

…Once a spammer is flagged, future post attempts by that spammer will be blocked. After all of the currently active spammers are blocked, then you can return and flag the remaining posts by each spammer. Of course this strategy cannot prevent the spammer from establishing new accounts, but it will throttle more repeat posts by spammer ‘B’ while you are still flagging posts from spammer ‘A’.

I wish that was true but reporting a spammer does not instantly block them from making further posts under the same account.

Well of course. It would need a moderator to validate that it actually is a spammer, and not one user trying to getting another user banned without cause.

Did you read what buzz wrote? That sounded like fact, which is not the case.

melvimbe

…Once a spammer is flagged, future post attempts by that spammer will be blocked. After all of the currently active spammers are blocked, then you can return and flag the remaining posts by each spammer. Of course this strategy cannot prevent the spammer from establishing new accounts, but it will throttle more repeat posts by spammer ‘B’ while you are still flagging posts from spammer ‘A’.

I wish that was true but reporting a spammer does not instantly block them from making further posts under the same account.

Well of course. It would need a moderator to validate that it actually is a spammer, and not one user trying to getting another user banned without cause.

Did you read what buzz wrote? That sounded like fact, which is not the case.

Yes. I assumed by ‘flagged’, he meant by someone with admin/moderator capabilities, not simply by a user. I could be mistake, but I took it in a more general forum moderation sense than the labels specifically used by insided. To my knowledge, all a user does when they ‘flag’ a post is notify moderators that this is a post they should look into. But a moderator can do as Buzz stated, block a user account, then flag/remove posts made by the user.

Danny

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