Damn Spam posts!

To Amberwolf and the rest of the ES forum admin team, thank you for taking the time to manually remove the spammers from the database. Thank you for speedily removing the spam posts. I support a web forum too, and know it is a constant and thankless battle. Your efforts are appreciated.

-Warren.
 
You're welcome. :)

Ther ehave been much less spammers registering, but I've still been nuking at least one a day, usually before they get tos pam anything. Two today. Dunno how many others have gotten (maybe it's in the logs).

EDIT: Looks like a whole bunch had to be nuked by Bigmoose the other day, and several more by Ypedal and Bigmoose last couple of day sincluding today. :(

EDIT2: Cleared out 115 spammers, perhaps 1/3-1/2 of which were not-yet-banned signature spammers that hadn't posted yet, and the rest that had been banned for posting spam already, but still had their spammy signatures in their profiles. notnomore, though. ;)

Now I am back to about the last week of Nov 2011, though I have not looked at every profile in the memberlist from now to then, just the ones that "looked" like spammers. At some point I'll have to actually look at every single profile unless someone can figure out a way to force the memberlist to show the profile fields in the listing itself. That'll be fun. :(
 
now back to end of October 2011, another 58 nuked; some hiding spam sigs without posting, some banned already, etc. Finally got back past the last 1000 members.

Only 12x that to go, or more. :cry:

But let's see. Just going by the numbers I posted previously in this thread as I did it, that's
92
51
1
50
82
115
58
for a total of 448 spammer accounts removed. Given that I just finally got back thru the most recent 1000 members (and only the obvious spammers were even looked at, mind you, there are certainly still some I missed), then over ONE THIRD of our "members" are actually spammers. :roll: (because there would ahve been nearly 1500 members total in the list of those gone thru so far, including the spammers)

I don't know if the proportion holds going back to the beginnng of the forum, as it will also depend on the moderator reaction to spammers---delete or ban, but if it does hold that's pretty sad.
 
I don't know if the proportion holds going back to the beginnng of the forum, as it will also depend on the moderator reaction to spammers---delete or ban, but if it does hold that's pretty sad.

Also that your efforts and the changing of the questions seems to have taken the load down. I never thought we were battling scripts. Guess my old school noggin kept thinking there was a real person behind each post. Now I am thinking it was mostly all scripts attacking us.
 
This is all speculation, but:

I figure there is a real person(s) that signs up, then that info is passed to other people that run spambots, in a list of forum signups. That's why there is often a delay, long or short, between signup and spam (and why some never do come back to spam us). It takes time for the email or whatever with the list to get to the other person, then they have to get the data into their bots, and then run the bots on their computers locally or remotely.

Sometimes that probably includes using malware to infect other computers with those bots, which means waiting until those computers are used and hooked to the internet to upload the lists to them and then have them do their thing.

The ones that never come back are probalby two classes:

The ones that leave no signature spam or profile info probably either got caught and cut off by their ISP or they failed to get the login list to the bot people.

The ones that leave the sig spam and profile spam but don't post probably never intended to post, and just leave the profile spam because a web search will still find it (presuming the forum in question is using the typical settings for privacy), and still boost their site rankings and whatnot, so they'll still get paid for doing their dirty deeds, without the bother of posting.
 
Just read through this thread. I find myself clicking that exclamation point/report option a fair bit, w/time often to send the user/bot a rude PM. Wish the reporting feature at least locked out further posts from user id until mod can review. Where the posts are obvious spam, wish I had access to just delete the user right away. Don't want/need any more mod access than this, but if you guys trust me... (I helmed a 3000+ user online network for many years as a bbs "sysop" back in the day.) If the Sheriffs here could Deputize some of us, spread the load... that'd be nice.
Lock
 
I think you worry too much about it lol..

Most of the early spam usernames are inactive and will not be doing jack since the forum has changed versions and servers etc.... most of these are created via massive random databases over scripts as mutli-forum attacks.... meh.. if we deal with a few active one's a day it's not too bad.. the change of Q%A seems to have helped greatly.

Adding a few more active moderators has been discussed, Arlo1 , dogman, etc.. may all get added soon ! :wink:
 
Man! I thought I had just gotten banned. Just got a message now when I logged in that said I'd been permanently banned for spamming. Turns out it was the IP address my VPN assigned me and not my actual account. Just refreshed the VPN and got in fine.

Whew!
 
Damn! Third time in a row. I have no idea what ip it was since it's automatic on my iPad. I'll see if I can find out what it is when it happens again.
 
@Michael Plogue: I removed any of the range-bans for Turkey-based IP addresses. If you PM me your current IP, whatever it happens to be, I'll make sure anything near it is removed from the list too. If you can find out from your service what range they use, I can simply remove anything within that range.

Ypedal said:
Most of the early spam usernames are inactive and will not be doing jack since the forum has changed versions and servers etc.... most of these are created via massive random databases over scripts as mutli-forum attacks.... meh.. if we deal with a few active one's a day it's not too bad.. the change of Q%A seems to have helped greatly.
True, but their profile spam is still there, and still attracting bots that look for it, plus it is still doing it's job of increasing rankint/traffic to their site from search engines.

Personally, the idea that they are still gaining from their improper actions irks me greatly. :( (especially when so many around the world can't even break even, much less gain, from their very proper and helpful actions)

So as I have time, I intend to remove them unless everyone specifically does not want this done. (not banning, but removal of their spammy profiles completely, en-masse as I make a list of the names as I find them)
 
Do it Amber! I'm behind you 100% Do we have to get an administrator to blow away the profiles for good?
 
AH I think I figured it out! You must be one of the "Global Mods" or "super mods" and have a few more windows available. ... I've been looking for the prune user panel and couldn't find it. That's OK, it is in good hands with you! I would probably get carried away with it... :mrgreen:
 
I'm removing only the ones I am certain are spammers of one kind or another; if there's any doubt I leave them. 99.999% of the ones I find have no posts here (becuase eiher they never posted or becuase the posts were already nuked, and the user banned)

If I have to check I do so by searching for their same username/IP on other forums (sometimes via google and sometimes via the StopForumSpam and similar sites) to see if they left spam there, if no posts exist here and they weren't already banned here. If they are banned here, they go. If they have signature spam or website link spam, buhbye.

If they have real posts that show they are not a spammer, and those posts are not copypasta off some other site (very common), I leave them alone.

Anyone that seems even a little to be a "real person" I leave alone.


That said, I just nuked another 240 of them, going back thru the next 500 members (so back to what was #1500 before I did this, but is now I guess #1310). It also includes a few found in other searches, by keyword in the username field. But that still makes about half of our "members" just spammers. :roll:


I started the keyword search because it will help me weed out a lot of spammers without having to dig thru the main memberlist for them, which is very time-consuming. .

I searched on these keywords already, and nuked the definite spammers among them:
rolex watch a123 online internet trade wow gold buy solar hotel china handbag purse jacket lithium sale coach viagra phentermine cheap porn pron casino store game polo

I have yet to get to doing these keyword searches in the username field:
polo battery deal fiji island facebook youtube myspace ebay essay www http battery bms bike bicycle motor xbox 360 nintendo wii top list property invest rent housing house afford joy fay phone stock game power level sell tera gear glass cig newport site part *.* wheel periactin discount ugg money pharm free bonus sex teen


and then there are the ICQ searches, since a surprising percentage of spammers fill in the ICQ field, but few real members do. It won't just find anything using * in the field, so instead I can use *(number)* in the field (like *0*) and it'll find anything with that digit in it. Same for 1-9. FWIW, the *1* search finds 921 users with an ICQ number containing a 1. Just glancing at the first page of that 19-page list, there's at least a dozen suspected spammers without even going into the profiles (whcih I'd have to do to verify if they really are spammers).

Anyway, I'm gonna go play with the dogs nwo cuz they're all really bored of me staring at the computer clicking things. :lol:
 
167 more old spammers nuked, using the ICQ search for *0*; still got 1 thru 9 to go. :roll: Oh, and there were only 176 results on that, so almost all of those with ICQ addresses in their profile are just spammers. (either signature spam or profile website link spam or both)

Some were relatively recent, more were from 2009, but almost all were from 2007, nearly all of those were from November, IIRC, and most were from the same handful of website spammers.


So...at a guess I will probably find on average another 1500 spammers just using the ICQ field in the profile. :roll: :( Since there's 900+ users with 1 in the field, vs 176 with 0 in the field, it could well be many times that amount of spammers. :cry:

(yeah, I realize it's been so long that they will never return...but their spam remains and I intensily dislike them profiting from their actions even potentially).
 
The problem with spammers is they are making money.

If the internet populous could be educated to "not" use spam to guide their purchases, the spammers would wither on the vine. Maybe it would be something as simple as having something installed on a browser to keep the "dumb" from going to a spam site. A alert, that tells them not to go there. Or even if a site like "Endless Sphere" could let the spammers know somehow that it's a waste of their time to come here, then that would discourage them. Like a warning, "don't waste your time here spammers, we alert everyone and we discourage people from going to spam sites".
 
Has anyone else been receiving spam emails from a battery manufacture in china called "ge battery" ?

I don't know how they got my email address but I am getting spam emails now from this company and a few others. I replied to guy from g e battery
named "hill" and told him I already have all the batteries I need and to stop emailing me. somehow his emails get around my spam blocker.

I'm just curious has anyone else been getting these weird type of emails?
 
I have occasionally gotten such spams from Sinopoly and "Linda from Headway" and similar places. They all sent theirs to the email that is (or was) available via my Electricle blog, so that I assume is where they got it from.

Dunno how they got yours unless you posted it somewhere, or you once emailed some other Chinese company (or a non-Chinese company that does business with one and shares contacts), or used your email to create a login for a website (like HobbyKing or the like) that hackers might have access to, or that might have given or sold all that information to other companies (stated policies notwithstanding).
 
yes linda from headway also stalks me.
 
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