• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

WTF spammers...

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
I don't get why even allow new members posts that have URLs in them?

It would be easier to just throw them all into a moderation queue, and then forum users would never see the spam.

Seems this forum software has some management tools... https://xenforo.com/help/spam/
A spammer may manage to bypass the automated registration checks and successfully register. A second line of defence can be added to prevent them from submitting their spam content. These options are found in the Spam Management group and are new to XenForo 1.2.

  1. Spam phrases can be defined. If any of a user's first few messages matches theses phrases, an action can be taken. For example, some spammers submit messages with "watch film name online". We can match that with "watch * online" and simply block the message.
  2. For more dynamic content matching, Akismet can be checked. This is a service that uses heuristics to determine if the submitted content is spam. If Akismet thinks the content is spam, you will need to manually approve (or delete) the message.
Click to expand...
So, #2 is what you would want...
 
I'd also add that we already do prevent many URLs from being entered. Spam is notoriously hard to fight against. There isn't one catchall method otherwise, well there wouldn't be any spam 😛
 
I've seen a lot of giberish spam before too. I have a feeling they serve another purpose than to try to advertise. Heck even most "advertisement" type spam is typically so badly formatted that no one in their right mind would even think it's legit. It's like if some bots just copy and paste email spam to forums lol.
 
The forums updated their defenses , obviously because I haven seen any spam in a day.
The gibberish posts/threads were them testing our new defenses.
I had posted in the one gibberish thread " Help , the spammers are feeling us up " or some such 🙂

Give them time , some will figure it out , hopefully most won't. At least no more of the 75 spam posts from each account.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top