Please don't reply to spammers

[Lemming]

It just gives me more work to do in tidying up.

Please do let me know by using the 'report' button but don't bother with replying to the spammer.

[tot ziens]

But I ordered a passport for Zimbabwe how am I gonna get it now ?

[Not_the_monk]

Got it

Just reported a couple; one thing though, there's a few spam threads around which have had their original post / poster nuked but the rest of the thread (ie people telling the spammer to f-off) and the original spam title remains. Do you want these reporting too (did a couple but there are more) as they do mess the board up a bit and imo it would be better if the whole thread disappeared?

[Lemming]

That's my point. I can delete the spammer and all of their posts but it leaves a mess behind if people have replied in their topics.

That's why I say "Please don't reply to spammers". Of course, you're very welcome to email them in Nigeria for your Zimbabwe passport

[Uncle Ron]

Should this be considered the same as "don't feed the stoners"?
...

[Sailor59]

Wot? Spam?

[Not_the_monk]

That's my point. I can delete the spammer and all of their posts but it leaves a mess behind if people have replied in their topics.

That's why I say "Please don't reply to spammers". Of course, you're very welcome to email them in Nigeria for your Zimbabwe passport

Wouldn't it work better though to outright delete the threads?

Or if not, create a subforum that is only visible to an admin, call it "trash can", and move spam threads in there.

[treetop]

n/t

[Cisco]

The place is infested , is anyone actually doing anything about it ? Going down hill fast (er)

[Balou]

The place is infested , is anyone actually doing anything about it ? Going down hill fast (er)

+1, Lemming is the only one who can.

[Lemming]

Glad to hear everyone is pleased with their new kitchens

There's a limit to what can be done to stop spammers.

As I understand it there are two kinds: automated and human. The automated kind, 'spambots', are programs that attempt to join up with forums and post spam on them. We used to have two levels of defence against them. Firstly there was a 'CAPTCHA', that is a graphic with text hidden in it that was supposed to be easy for a human to read and hard for a machine. Secondly I asked all new members to email me so I could manual enable them.

In recent times the 'CAPTCHA' method has become useless. The machines had cracked it and we were getting mailboxes overflowing with crap. CAPTCHAs keep out far more real people who can't or can't be bothered to solve them than they do spambots. The second level of defence was stopping the spambots from actually posting but was a pain for everyone.

To solve this problem I switched to using question and answer rather than CAPTCHA to keep out the spambots. This seems to be working. We no longer have overflowing mailboxes and it's much easier for real people to join.

It is much harder to stop human spammers. They can get past CAPTCHA, Q&A and even send emails requesting activation. The only thing I can do is to deactivate them as soon as they reveal themselves and delete their posts.

Those of you who flag up spam when you spot it by clicking the report button help a lot so thanks very much to you. I check the posts at least once most days so spam usually doesn't last long. I don't think there is much more I can do.

[ftcarer]

It just gives me more work to do in tidying up.

Please do let me know by using the 'report' button but don't bother with replying to the spammer.

[gapie]

THNX

[bigdaddyk]

get rid of cheesedab he's been spamming up the boards for quite a while now

[Old Timer]

get rid of cheesedab he's been spamming up the boards for quite a while now

+1 He/She/It really does need to go!