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Stuart_W
Stuart_W
World-Class Superstar
October 10, 2016
Answered

Lots of Spam Recently

The last couple of days there has been a lot of spam on the forum

Obviously it's irritating but I'm also concerned that Sonos is dragging it's heels in removing the obvious spam posts. Many of these are multiple posts by the same users.

What is being done to resolve this and cannot Sonos take advantage of some senior posters to help police/moderate this?
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    Max P
    Max PAnswer
    Sonos Employee
    October 10, 2016
    Hi Guys,

    We're aware of the this. We are looking into IP blocking and hopefully this will stop/reduces the number of spammers.
    Thanks in advance for flagging the spammers.
    Help others find useful posts by clicking the like button and selecting the best answer to your question.
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    10 replies

    Stuart_W
    Stuart_WAuthor
    World-Class Superstar
    October 10, 2016
    User john20jackson created 2 threads an hour ago and since I made this post that user has created 2 more spam posts.

    Come on Sonos!
    Arc + Sub (Gen 1) + 2 x Play 1/ Stereo Play 3s/ Era 100 Stereo in Kitchen, One Stereo in Bedroom, Play 1 stereo pair in Study, Play 1in Bathroom, Sonos Move 2
    ratty
    ratty
    October 10, 2016
    cannot Sonos take advantage of some senior posters to help police/moderate this?
    After 5 years of doing just that on the old forums I'm not particularly keen to tell you the truth. And even with the user moderator rights we had back then we couldn't block IPs, which was at times frustrating.

    The latest spam wave has been reported. I suspect that the lack of US admin presence over the weekend could be connected with the Columbus Day holiday. Either that or everyone's too absorbed with the 'debate'...
      Stuart_W
      Stuart_WAuthor
      World-Class Superstar
      October 10, 2016
      Thanks ratty. I agree and I wasn't necessarily offering either. I did report the first or second instance of this particular wave.
      I assumed that the lack of Sonos admin was for the reason you suggest but I have seen Sonos activity this morning so there are European support on the site at the moment.
      Arc + Sub (Gen 1) + 2 x Play 1/ Stereo Play 3s/ Era 100 Stereo in Kitchen, One Stereo in Bedroom, Play 1 stereo pair in Study, Play 1in Bathroom, Sonos Move 2
      Max P
      Max PAnswer
      Sonos Employee
      October 10, 2016
      Hi Guys,

      We're aware of the this. We are looking into IP blocking and hopefully this will stop/reduces the number of spammers.
      Thanks in advance for flagging the spammers.
      Help others find useful posts by clicking the like button and selecting the best answer to your question.
      Stuart_W
      Stuart_WAuthor
      World-Class Superstar
      October 10, 2016
      Can you not set a Turing test in the new user creation section?
      Arc + Sub (Gen 1) + 2 x Play 1/ Stereo Play 3s/ Era 100 Stereo in Kitchen, One Stereo in Bedroom, Play 1 stereo pair in Study, Play 1in Bathroom, Sonos Move 2
      ratty
      ratty
      October 10, 2016
      Can you not set a Turing test in the new user creation section?
      You probably mean Captcha, a form of reverse Turing test. It won't keep out the determined spammers though. They simply farm out the Captcha decodes to humans in lower wage economies.

      There may be some other kind of validation Sonos could use. Sonos may have to take the board offline temporarily. It's presently in danger of being rendered useless. Finding new posts was hard enough as it is, without this.
      Stuart_W
      Stuart_WAuthor
      World-Class Superstar
      October 10, 2016
      Yes I do mean that. I thought they were known as Turing tests?

      I do agree with what you say but assumed that as all these posts are in the same place that it was being automated.
      Arc + Sub (Gen 1) + 2 x Play 1/ Stereo Play 3s/ Era 100 Stereo in Kitchen, One Stereo in Bedroom, Play 1 stereo pair in Study, Play 1in Bathroom, Sonos Move 2
      ratty
      ratty
      October 10, 2016
      Opening an account can use a human. After that it's probably over to the bots.
      Ryan S
      Ryan S
      Retired Sonos Staff
      October 10, 2016
      Just to update you guys, we're still working on it. The posts have been coming in from mostly different IP's too, so a ban by IP won't even do the trick, though some of the ones that duplicated were banned by IP. We have people here and at InSided working on a number of solutions while we're working to delete and ban posts.

      In the mean time, sorry for the clutter. We're working to clear it out.

      (And yes, staffing is a little light due to the weekend and with the holiday in the US, but we're here to help anyway.)

      If you see a post that seems old and you think we might have missed it feel free to report it. But we're going to be combing through the community actively on seek and destroy mode.
      Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.
      CAW
      Collaborator II
      October 10, 2016
      Trying to block by IP isn't very effective these days because the spammers are using botnets to farm this stuff out now. So you end up seeing the spam from tons of different uniques. The only real solution right now is to figure out a way to identify the bots either with a more advanced sign-up, or based on content in the posts. I forget if you make people validate their Emails before you allow them to post or not. If you aren't requiring that, that would probably help cut down on a lot of it (though the more advanced bots will account even for that but it requires their creator to add the logic for it).
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