Suggestion to help against the unwanted spam.

[les]

Can there be a counter that after say 10 reports a post or an authors posts for that day are quarantined?


This would encourage members to report spam as they will see quicker responses.

[supermokkori]

Can there be a counter that after say 10 reports a post or an authors posts for that day are quarantined?

This would encourage members to report spam as they will see quicker responses.

I actually thought about this too... but then, there's the counter of abusing it - i.e., if one member is particularly pissed off at another member, they could start reporting their posts to get their account "quarantined".

It's a thought tho...

[les]

This would not apply to an old poster just members under a week old

[les]

This would not apply to an old poster just members under a week old

[supermokkori]

This would not apply to an old poster just members under a week old

Well something is better than nothing... new spammer tonight just posted 30 spamming threads in less than 13 minutes.

[Banquo]

Right now there seems to be a revolving door, one spammer gets wiped another spammer comes in. You can almost hear the forum groaning under the strain of it all.

[les]

All a mod needs to do is look at the
                 "Latest Forum Posts"
On the Milo home page for the latest spammer.

It seems the latest wave is only posting three at a time.

Are new filters in place ?

[kong]

Can we just ban the site 85.17.187.83, so it is impossible to send a link in milovana to that ip-adress?
Then we do not have to ban spamming accounts and it would be automatically no use for them to spam if they can not paste THE link.

It sounds really harsh, but if it is not a spam, the people can tell you how to find the side in different ways (like search in google).

[supermokkori]

Latest spammer:

http://www.milovana.com/forum/memberlis ... le&u=30128

it's getting worse... 27 spam threads in 11 minutes?!?!?

I suppose it's not that effective to put some type of thread limit over a certain amount of minutes, since spammers will probably just create another account and start spamming again. Still...

And yes, reported all his spam links already... just real damn annoying.

[FicklePickleTickle]

Can there be a counter that after say 10 reports a post or an authors posts for that day are quarantined?

This would encourage members to report spam as they will see quicker responses.

I actually thought about this too... but then, there's the counter of abusing it - i.e., if one member is particularly pissed off at another member, they could start reporting their posts to get their account "quarantined".

It's a thought tho...

I honestly think this is your best bet.

Implement this so that it hides or otherwise at least temporarily removes the post from the Forum until a moderator can decide what action to take. Have two separate buttons; Report Spam or Report Post. A better name for the second one might be good to avoid confusion, but I'm sure you get the idea. One for Spam only, the other to flag someone breaking the rules of conduct on the site. The second one would not automatically hide or quarantine posts; they would be handled in the same manner as they are now.

Require it to have multiple users click the report spam button, not just one person repeatedly clicking it. The amount of clicks required should be determined by the amount of users normally online at any given time. In other words, if there are serious low-traffic times, then maybe only two or three clicks would trigger it. If there are lots of regulars on at all hours, then five or even ten would be better.

When clicked, the button should take the user to confirmation page, where that user is asked if they are certain that this is indeed spam. On this page in big letters/bold print, should be a warning that misuse of this spam report button will result in serious repercussions.

If there's a confirmation page and a warning; it will be less likely that members will use it out of pettiness or when they get their panties in a bunch.

Just my two cents. I've seen the flood of posts quite a few times and it's rather annoying to say the least.

[Banquo]

They are getting "clever" now and starting to post little descriptions and stories along with their links.

[seraph0x]

Quick update: We just modified our registration process again. We now require email verification. But instead of the normal way phpBB does email verification with a verification link, we do it by sending you a randomly generated login password. Hopefully if the spammers are using bots, they won't be able to handle that without modifying their bot and hopefully they'll be too dumb to do that.

If the spam keeps going (after they've exhausted the accounts they already have), it's going to be time to assume that this is either manual spam or that the spammers have no problem with updating their bots for whatever we throw their way. In that case, if the attack is human, the defense has to be human as well which would mean some mechanism that would allow users to flag spam for automated removal.

Certainly, this would present the potential for abuse (e.g. flagging legitimate posts as spam because you disagree), but we can probably minimize that, by requiring a minimum post count and minimum age of the account in order to use the "vote spam" feature, plus repeated abuse of this feature will result in your own account getting banned.

[les]

The timing and spacing of the spam posts seems to suggest it is a European Human.

[supermokkori]

Thanks seraph0x for the action update - it's been a day or so since you've made the change and haven't seen any more of that annoying spam come up (knocks on wood).

[seraph0x]

I just got an email from the admin of saff.cc - I'm pretty sure that's one of the sites the spam posts were advertising - asking if we've be interested in "exchanging traffic".

There is no way Milovana will be exchanging anything with them. Wouldn't want to catch the clap or something.

But I guess them trying to cozy up means our anti-spam measures have had an impact, right?