forums So what's with all this spam?

[Ruby Genseki]

I'm not sure about where I'm suppossed to post this but since it's not Pokémon related I guess it fits as an off-topic issue.

We've had three spam posts in a single night -when I made this screenshot the first one was already deleted tho-, is this common? I haven't been here for that long so it's the first time I see this, Idk how often does this happen.

Edited July 29, 2017 by Ruby Genseki

[wrathsoffire76]

It seems to be happening a lot recently, people looking for free advertising. We need some sort of auto-bot moderator that looks for websites in titles and deletes them automatically 

[Ruby Genseki]

2 minutes ago, wrathsoffire76 said:

We need some sort of auto-bot moderator that looks for websites in titles and deletes them automatically 

I was thinking something like that as well, but I guess it'd be asking too much, programming a bot to accurately identify spam posts wouldn't be that easy

[wrathsoffire76]

1 minute ago, Ruby Genseki said:

I guess it'd be asking too much, programming a bot to accurately identify spam posts wouldn't be that easy

 

Probably has been done before, we just need to look in the right direction.

[evandixon]

Spam is just a normal part of running a forum. We have protections in place to minimize what we would otherwise get, but nothing's fool proof.

It's possible to make a bot that hides posts with URLs in the titles, but the forum's API currently doesn't support searching for new posts, which means it would take so long it'd just be easier for a human to delete spam. The best thing to do in the mean time is to just report it and ignore it.

[theSLAYER]

Also, we wouldn't want to disclose how we caught a bulk of the spam; we don't want the spam to avoid capture now, would we?

[Ruby Genseki]

2 hours ago, evandixon said:

Spam is just a normal part of running a forum.

The best thing to do in the mean time is to just report it and ignore it.

Still, does advertising in forums actually work? why do they even keep trying? I don't think it's that effective, they just do it out of malice...

 

1 hour ago, theSLAYER said:

Also, we wouldn't want to disclose how we caught a bulk of the spam; we don't want the spam to avoid capture now, would we?

Well, of course, I'm not asking you to disclose that info .-.

[theSLAYER]

5 hours ago, Ruby Genseki said:

Still, does advertising in forums actually work? why do they even keep trying? I don't think it's that effective, they just do it out of malice...

I've got to agree with that, to the point that I don't think it even works.

its not products any of us would be interested in -.-

i think gbatemp.net recently has been hit with similar looking ads.

[jasenyoface]

In my time zone, spambots usually register and post their ads in the late night hours.
I believe we "human spam deleters"  do a swell job catching a post before it's possibly seen. mod appreciation day

[Got_Eevees]

:3 mod appreciation day.

Thankfully,before the screenshot,I've never seen anything like that.

[Sabresite]

One person who clicks it and downloads malware is worth thousands of dollars.  It is worth it to them, even for a slim chance.

[Got_Eevees]

Sabresite, yes

[Got_Eevees]

'tis true,sadly.

I have been infected actually one too many times. ;-;

Mostly other people using my computer when it happened but some of those happened when I downloaded DLC content whether for portable mobile games or just files.

What I meant is that I have never seen links posted just outright like that in such a manner,that is.

 

[theSLAYER]

2 hours ago, Got_Eevees said:

'tis true,sadly.

I have been infected actually one too many times. ;-;

Mostly other people using my computer when it happened but some of those happened when I downloaded DLC content whether for portable mobile games or just files.

What I meant is that I have never seen links posted just outright like that in such a manner,that is.

 

I've seen it happen on various forums, such as ours, gbatemp, etc, across the years.

The bots just posts ads, and it is really annoying to me XD


Tho nowadays, it tends to be less obvious to users, as they're usually quarantined or something ><

[wrathsoffire76]

17 hours ago, theSLAYER said:

I've seen it happen on various forums, such as ours, gbatemp, etc, across the years.

The bots just posts ads, and it is really annoying to me XD


Tho nowadays, it tends to be less obvious to users, as they're usually quarantined or something ><

GBAtemp is constantly getting spambots and I feel like the mods don't do a quick enough job at removing them in time