Spammers

[Anonymous]

Most of you will have noticed, that we have been pretty heavily attacked by spammers over the last month. As a result of this we have installed a range of countermeasures on the site that should cut this out.

Due to the shear volume of spammer registrations recently, there are most likely a lot of spambots that are still currently registered on the site, that we won't be able to identify until they are activated and start posting spam.

I'd like to ask everyone to be vigilant and please use the "report post" button to report any spam posts you find to the site team so that we can delete and ban the user responsible.

Over time this should start to level off and reduce.

Hopefully the measures that we've taken should stamp this out, if not, then there are further tools that we have ready to implement.

Apologies for the spam and thanks for your patience.

 

[richard.au]

what they said ^^^

oh, and where can i get one of them sharp cassette radios, my led zep tapes need dusting off

 

[frankvdb]

Most of you will have noticed, that we have been pretty heavily attacked by spammers over the last month. As a result of this we have installed a range of countermeasures on the site that should cut this out.

Due to the shear volume of spammer registrations recently, there are most likely a lot of spambots that are still currently registered on the site, that we won't be able to identify until they are activated and start posting spam.

I'd like to ask everyone to be vigilant and please use the "report post" button to report any spam posts you find to the site team so that we can delete and ban the user responsible.

Over time this should start to level off and reduce.

Hopefully the measures that we've taken should stamp this out, if not, then there are further tools that we have ready to implement.

Apologies for the spam and thanks for your patience.

If I look in the members list I feel it's pretty easy to identify the potential spammers.
I'd say that any profile with an advertisement URL and a far away country in it is suspicious and is candidate for removal.
It's been a long time since I registered and I don't know the details of the changes implemented, but I'd suggest that at least the registration process includes a captcha to try to keep the spambots out.
Meanwhile I will keep reporting spam.
Thanks for your efforts.

Frank

 

[Anonymous]

Most of you will have noticed, that we have been pretty heavily attacked by spammers over the last month. As a result of this we have installed a range of countermeasures on the site that should cut this out.

Due to the shear volume of spammer registrations recently, there are most likely a lot of spambots that are still currently registered on the site, that we won't be able to identify until they are activated and start posting spam.

I'd like to ask everyone to be vigilant and please use the "report post" button to report any spam posts you find to the site team so that we can delete and ban the user responsible.

Over time this should start to level off and reduce.

Hopefully the measures that we've taken should stamp this out, if not, then there are further tools that we have ready to implement.

Apologies for the spam and thanks for your patience.

If I look in the members list I feel it's pretty easy to identify the potential spammers.
I'd say that any profile with an advertisement URL and a far away country in it is suspicious and is candidate for removal.
It's been a long time since I registered and I don't know the details of the changes implemented, but I'd suggest that at least the registration process includes a captcha to try to keep the spambots out.
Meanwhile I will keep reporting spam.
Thanks for your efforts.

Frank

Unfortunately they're not as easy as you think. I banned two genuine members two days ago and then had to reinstate them.

As for adverts in profiles, we can't effectively check the profile of every new registration and most spammers don't actually make these kind of additions until a week or two after the registration, so it's impossible to spot these until the spam bot is actually online and posting.

Nearly every Captcha out there has already been cracked by the spamming community so it's actually better to use a challenge question that bots struggle to answer, so that's what we've done. In addition to this we've implemented new banning tools to make it easier for the site team to ban spammers and delete their posts. The most effective change is to move our DNS through Cloudflare which gives very effective protection against known and suspected spammers before they even reach the site.

I'm hopeful that this should all be enough but have a couple of other weapons available that require a bit more effort to implement. Hopefully wont need these but will install them if required.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Tony for keeping things in check, and the mods for working tirelessly banning the spammers.

You can only do your best!

 

[frankvdb]

Thanks Tony.
Clearly you are better informed than I am and this forum is in good hands.
Thanks to all moderators for all their efforts!