Massive Spam Attack

[gbm]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

snip
I know what you mean about the search function - I've also had the issue of trying without success to find a thread I know had been there.

What I so when I want to do a search on MoblileRead is open a new tab to DuckDuckGo or google search then enter the search as:

mobileread virtualbox linux

bernie

[crich70]

I wish there were a way to spot the spammers before they are able to spam the boards with 10 + posts. If there were there probably wouldn't be so many spam posts for the Admins/Mods to have to deal with. Is there a way to increase the time that has to pass between posting a new thread and starting another new thread? That might help to slow down the spammers if not get rid of them entirely.

[Phogg]

Other boards I am on require fifteen moderator approved replies to existing threads before being allowed to post new topics.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by crich70

I wish there were a way to spot the spammers before they are able to spam the boards with 10 + posts. If there were there probably wouldn't be so many spam posts for the Admins/Mods to have to deal with. Is there a way to increase the time that has to pass between posting a new thread and starting another new thread? That might help to slow down the spammers if not get rid of them entirely.

MR members could do more, such as starting on the Forums home page.

Two days in a row a few days before the recent massive spam, I happened to spot a thread with a long title in east asian characters. I looked at the post and it was huge and in classic spam layout. I reported those posts and everything got cleaned up before there were many messages.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

MR members could do more, such as starting on the Forums home page.

Two days in a row a few days before the recent massive spam, I happened to spot a thread with a long title in east asian characters. I looked at the post and it was huge and in classic spam layout. I reported those posts and everything got cleaned up before there were many messages.

Some of us have done more in the past. Some of us reported spam posts and the Mods/Admins told us not to as they could see when a spammer had shown up and we'd just be making more work for them by duplicate reports (or something. I don't recall the details now).

[dordale]

Just out of curiosity, do the massive spams do anything for the spammers other than the joy of irritating and inconveniencing others? Especially in this case when the spams are in Chinese and probably not readable by the majority of active members here.

[cromag]

There's more SPAM coming in now, and only one green name in the Currently Active list. I assume he's busy cleaning the aisles, so to speak!

Thanks for the good work, Alexander Turcic.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by dordale

Just out of curiosity, do the massive spams do anything for the spammers other than the joy of irritating and inconveniencing others? Especially in this case when the spams are in Chinese and probably not readable by the majority of active members here.

They probably get a percentage of people to click on one of their links which can be the point of some attacks. Click on the link and get infected with malware/ramsonware/etc.

[DiapDealer]

It's all about search engine results. Their posts have keywords/links in them. Google (and other bots) crawls Mobileread indexing links. The more of their links Google indexes, the higher their page-ranking in search results.

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by crich70

Some of us have done more in the past. Some of us reported spam posts and the Mods/Admins told us not to as they could see when a spammer had shown up and we'd just be making more work for them by duplicate reports (or something. I don't recall the details now).

During one of the last massive attacks, the Mods asked us to stop reporting those. They were receiving so many reports, they had to check each one, and it made it impossible to know if the reports were for a different issue being reported that had nothing to do with the active attack.

When the forums are being flooded, it's obvious to anyone looking.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by crich70

Some of us have done more in the past. Some of us reported spam posts and the Mods/Admins told us not to as they could see when a spammer had shown up and we'd just be making more work for them by duplicate reports (or something. I don't recall the details now).

It is also difficult to usefully report spam, as you can only report one post every two minutes, while they are created much faster than that.

Perhaps a function that automatically hid all posts from a new user, or prevented them posting until moderation cleared a flag, if more than X people reported their posts?
That way spam handling could usefully be outsourced to existing users.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

During one of the last massive attacks, the Mods asked us to stop reporting those. They were receiving so many reports, they had to check each one, and it made it impossible to know if the reports were for a different issue being reported that had nothing to do with the active attack.

When the forums are being flooded, it's obvious to anyone looking.

True that. When you see a full page or more of unreadable posts it's pretty obvious what's up.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

During one of the last massive attacks, the Mods asked us to stop reporting those. They were receiving so many reports, they had to check each one, and it made it impossible to know if the reports were for a different issue being reported that had nothing to do with the active attack.

This. At a certain point/rate, spam reports stop being helpful and start being spam themselves. Having to wade through page after page of reported spam (each one needing to be checked to determine if it has been dealt with already) so other issues don't get overlooked is counter-productive.

Don't get me wrong. We love how proactive the membership is in helping us to quickly eliminate "normal" spam. But when we make a request that members temporarily suspend that behavior during an attack like this, it's because the help has become as much of a burden as the spam.

[issybird]

Let me amplify a bit. We want people to continue reporting ordinary spam. We just don't want it to get lost in the middle of reports of highly visible spam and we want to be able to act on that as quickly as possible, also.

And, please, just report it and move on? Engaging with spammers is pointless and also creates more work.

[CRussel]

Thanks for all you do, moderators! I see we're getting hit again, but it appears to be disappearing nearly as fast as it gets here. Very much appreciated.