Spam problems on the forum

[Rosie]

Hi everyone,
no doubt you've seen the barage of spam we're getting on the site - I'm trying to ban people as quickly as they appear. So irritating!

Can everyone pleeease refrain from replying to any spam posts. Just ignore them and I'll get them deleted asap.

Currently the DP team is on annual leave for the next week and will be back in the office on 4th January, so there will be a reduced presence on the website. We'll be trying to get online as often as possible to approve images on the galleries and keep an eye on the spammers.

Have a great Christmas and New Year everyone xxxx

[peterlyall]

The only Spam is to be had with chips, eggs, oh and more Spam!......Just ask Monty Python
Happy Christmas

[Medley]

Does it help to report the spam Rosie, or does just "clutter things up" for you and the team?

[Rosie]

No dont worry it's pretty easy to spot - if you see it on here longer than a few days then report it, but otherwise we should catch it.

[ALwin]

Ok spam needs to be handled faster, or have more moderators on the forums. Perhaps allow some forum members to moderate on behalf of DP.

As for removing spam:
1) Ban the spam account by IP+email+domain
2) Delete all posts and the user account.

[Troy]

There are several moderators now Aung, but with a few of them out of the office it's hard to keep on top of it. I do try and get to it all as soon as i can, but you guys flagging it up really makes it a lot easier.

[NigelD]

There was a huge amount of spam over the Christmas period, loads of which I reported and had an acknowledgement back this morning that it would be addressed as a priority - half of it is still there....

[Matt Bennett]

It was addressed yesterday morning, but more spam has returned in less than 24 hours.

Unfortunately, short of spending more time removing spam on the forum than we spend producing the magazine, it's hard to do much about this.

Just off to remove yet more spam right now, as it happens.

[Matt Bennett]

Ok, right now, at 12.16pm on Tuesday, I think we are spam free. I am sure it won't be long before it's back though.

NigelD - I think I have dealt with everything. Please let me know if there's something I've missed. Thank you.

[NigelD]

Well done Matt - must be horrendous keeping this up to date.

[Matt Bennett]

Well done Matt - must be horrendous keeping this up to date.

Thank you.

It is a nuisance, certainly. Just deleted yet another batch of spam!

[Keitht]

I think the perception is that all the mods are DP staffers and they only monitor the board during working hours. The spammers obviously have the same impression and go mad at weekends. I would suggest that you either need to have a mod on duty over the weekends / holidays or expand your mod team to include a couple of the more active members of the board in the team.
My own participation on the board has never been massive but it has decreased over time because of the amount of spam.

[AprilM]

Alas, our wretched spammers aren't even actual people - just software robots set up to garble a few words and spit out some links. All that contacting their email addresses will do is tell the people running them that this is an active forum (It's not actually the companies represented who do the spamming, they pay for a service that does it for them), which would result in even more spam for even more rubbish. We're currently getting our web team to research some ways that we could possibly prevent spambots from registering in the first place, but that will take a while, and some cunning!

Thank you to those who have offered to moderate the forum and clean off the spam. It's a very generous offer but as we can't offer you anything in return for your efforts (which, take it from us, would have to be herculean in order to stay on top of the sheer amount of spam we get) we're unable to take you up on it.

[NigelD]

Thank you to those who have offered to moderate the forum and clean off the spam. It's a very generous offer but as we can't offer you anything in return for your efforts (which, take it from us, would have to be herculean in order to stay on top of the sheer amount of spam we get) we're unable to take you up on it.

... thought I'd landed a nice part time job there (