Spammers

[Ed]

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I haven’t been around for the past two days. I checked in this evening to find 10 spam accounts had posted 16 spam topics while I’ve been away.
Sorry about that. The various spam protection systems usually stop that. It’s all deleted now and the spam accounts are dealt with.

Steve likes this

[Anonymous]

Thanks @ed – as if you didn’t have enough work already 🙁

Charles VA and Steve like this

[Ed]

I wonder if they somehow wait for me to be away so their junk stays up longer?

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[Steve]

Looks like we’ve had another attack.

[Ed]

19 more spam signups deleted and 28 spam posts. I’ve locked new signups to discourage the spammer. They usually give up after a few days. Meanwhile I’ll be on alert.

[Ed]

Looks like the spam is under control again now. If it stays clear until tomorrow, I’ll reopen new signups.

Steve likes this

[Ed]

Our community is open for new signups again!

[Steve]

Looks like the spammers are back.

[Ed]

They’re getting through three levels of spam protection. It routinely catches 20-30 posts per day anyway, but these past few days lots of posts have been getting through. Time to look at alternative security measures, I think.

[Ed]

I still haven’t worked out precisely how they are doing it, but the spammers are still getting through the new protection. Less spam is getting through than before, it would seem, but I still some way to go to stop it. I’m manually checking all new signups currently and deleting some before they post.

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[Ed]

Another massive spam attack in the early hours. All deleted and banned now, but it looks like I’ll have to start routinely switching off new signups over night.

Steve likes this

[Ed]

All signups in the past 24 hours have been spammers (zero activity [weird for someone who’s just signed up], on the site for less than 2 minutes, no details of location, gender, interest etc given and got the human test questions wrong etc.), but only one got caught by the detection systems :(.

 

For now, I’m going to keep new registrations turned off at night. We seem to get most spammer signups about 1-2 hours after I go to bed.

[Ed]

Well, I kept the registration form open last night and we didn’t get any spammer signups. Let’s hope that bodes well and that the latest changes in spam protection will work for a while.

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[Author]

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