Spam threads - and their increasing number...

[Sharyn]

Have to admit the spamming of threads is a big turn off for me so that has been partially responsible for why I don't visit ESM as often as I used to.


I get tired of going to a thread to read it only to find the comment is spam or one that new people have created / commented on with very basic information to get their post count up to allow them to post their link.


I don't understand why they don't realise this is not conducive to anyone clicking on their link. It has the opposite effect on me -- it guarantees that I will never visit their site. One can only hope that they will eventually see the Light & cease & desist!

Love & Blessings,
Sharyn

[Joit]

Can someone shorten the Time between Reporting a Post?
That way you can report them faster, when its crowded again.

Well its may a Reason that they feel so special when they come in and put Advertising, and think, someone did only wait for HER Links, what they trow in.
Wonder if this Guys ever asked herself, if they would Click on Ads, when its in HER Forum.

[StweenyA]

Great ideas, however, could not this also be prevented by updating the forum software? Often updates fix things like the capacha generators, which seem to get hacked over time.
The update would therefore hopefully prevent auto registration etc.

[MonsieurM]

just so you know

Hidden Industry Dupes Social Media Users - Technology Review

has uncovered a multimillion-dollar industry that pays hundreds of thousands of people to distort interactions in social networks and to post spam.

[QuarterPole]

a minimum number of posts.

Leads to automated lorem ipsum gibberish posts, compounding the problem.

As it stands, this thread is an easy target. Only worsened by the Copyright bit at the bottom of the page (which should not be in HTML, but should be in image form).

"What is the colour of this forums logo"? ... "Wh*t is 2 pl*s tw0?"

A much better approach, in my mind. I am also fond of reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA is a system originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University's main Pittsburgh campus. It uses CAPTCHA to help digitize the text of books while protecting websites from bots attempting to access restricted areas. On September 16, 2009, Google acquired reCAPTCHA. reCAPTCHA is currently digitizing the archives of The New York Times and books from Google Books. Twenty years of The New York Times have been digitized and the project planned to have completed the remaining years by the end of 2010.
...
Scanned text is subjected to analysis by two different optical character recognition programs; in cases where the programs disagree, the questionable word is converted into a CAPTCHA. The word is displayed along with a control word already known. The system assumes that if the human types the control word correctly, the questionable word is also correct.

Not perfect, but adds a layer of security, helps to digitize existing texts, and doesn't take away my ability, as a new user, to link to Wikipedia.

Peace

[Savvypro]

[QuarterPole]

Aha, now I understand. Giving this thread 5 stars.

[Savvypro]

Actually, for some software, they embed a footprint in the HTML code as well - Word Press being a good example.

[Savvypro]

Porn spam...

It was just a metter of time, but now we have a bunch of porn spam - by new user: oliviergarnit

Here are the thread titles (all posted within a half hour of each other):

[Savvypro]

We now have spam for SEO services, by roryalec3 (with 10 posts in 12 mins).

Now that is completely ironic.


Looks like oliviergarnit has had most of his porn spam threads/posts removed, but he is still around with just 1 porn thread in the General Discussion section.

[Savvypro]

We now have Florida Insurance for car/home etc. spam by user: rulerchief

[blackchisel97]

youtube scams

Nearly 100 videos posted by different users (probably one a***hole behind it).
This is one example, showing RomeroUK video from last year - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWswr...49FAAAAAAAAAAA and using Howard Johnson patents to lure people to their website.

V