Peak Oil News and Message Boards

When I click on new posts, I see a flood of spam accounts in tech support. Is there a way to shut this off or not. Is there no account verification going on before these spammers can post?

Cog,

The site has been under attack for a while. I can’t speak to the various protective techniques because I don’t have that technical knowledge. What happens is that the spammers keep adapting so the protective measures need to keep changing. It’s a tiresome game. What you see is just the latest iteration.

Newfie wrote:Cog,

The site has been under attack for a while. I can’t speak to the various protective techniques because I don’t have that technical knowledge. What happens is that the spammers keep adapting so the protective measures need to keep changing. It’s a tiresome game. What you see is just the latest iteration.

I think I'm for bringing back old time punishments like time in the stocks for serial malicious spammers, when they're convicted.

Maybe films of such folks being pelted with rotten cabbages, etc. for several hours might convince such folks to take up new hobbies/employment.

But I know, there I go again being all impolitic again. And I know, if it's Russian spammers, the US can't punish them.

The world, just like the economy, is a very mixed bag, re good and bad points, IMO.

How about making it so the "Technical Support" forum doesn't show up in "View new posts" and "View active topics"? Without an audience to look at the spam they might stop. At the very least users who frequent "View new posts" and "View active topics" wouldn't have to see this hidden battle being waged.

LOL So I start a thread about spammers and get a spammer in my thead. This is truly funny now. I wonder if I could create cold fusion this way.

I’ve no idea what your talking about!

The forum response to spammers is to impose a time window on posts. I find that I am often waiting to post since I fall into this spammer window. I think that the window should be reduced since spammers don't actually type out responses, but "spam" blocks of text. So their posts are in fractions of a second and not in tens of seconds.

dissident wrote:The forum response to spammers is to impose a time window on posts. I find that I am often waiting to post since I fall into this spammer window. I think that the window should be reduced since spammers don't actually type out responses, but "spam" blocks of text. So their posts are in fractions of a second and not in tens of seconds.

You are confusing the flooding limit, that prevent more than one post after another in a chain dominating a thread, and the SPAM defences which mostly bounces all new poster messages until I or another mod clears them for release to the board.

I agree