PH: can you please get a grip on these effing spammers!

[Jonny_]

This is how the first 6 pages of General Gassing look this morning.

Clearly your spam filtering is inadequate, this morning's example is particularly profligate but this sort of crap appears all too regularly.

Must be something more that you can do to filter out these gimps?

[Don Roque]

Maybe having a few mods on 24hr cover would work?

[Jonny_]

Somewhat ironically, it appears that a PHer's post taking the piss out of the spam has been moved before the actual mountain of spam has been dealt with...

Come on, mods. Priorities.

[Bill]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

We think highly of you too!

Somewhat ironic but yours was the first thread at the top of what's new when I first looked this morning so I didn't realise it was a pisstake.

So (after some deliberation) I moved it, before realising my mistake. And now the defunct "moved" link is there forever more.

ETA yes, we're on it but it takes time to tidy up...

[The Mad Monk]

Bill said:

ETA yes, we're on it but it takes time to tidy up...

What's the money like?

I am normally up early, so I could sleep with one eye on the board and be ready to pounce.

[Bill]

Obviously we're on the enhanced PPP scheme but I think most of us do it for the kudos.

[Ben Lowden]

Jonny_ said:

Clearly your spam filtering is inadequate, this morning's example is particularly profligate but this sort of crap appears all too regularly.

Must be something more that you can do to filter out these gimps?

Apologies for this, we recognise how frustrating it is for members and it is for us too. Our CarGurus team are trialling some software in the US that we're hoping will make its way down to PH that'll help us prevent spam further, but there's no timeline on this just yet.

We do try to block common spam email domains, we have limits on number of posts a member can make within the first 24 hours and where they can post to try and prevent spam attacks, plus the forums goes into a safe mode overnight to prevent new members spamming but we have to strike a balance between trying to prevent spam and not censoring genuine new members too much.

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Abuse towards our moderators will not be tolerated – you have been suspended from the forums and anything else like this will lead to a full ban. The majority of our moderators are volunteers and give up their time to make PH a better place to be – there really is no need for this sort of behaviour.

[Tankrizzo]

Ben can you put Recaptcha in for new account signups, it should be straightforward. It's not foolproof but will weed some out.

[droopsnoot]

Ben Lowden said:

we have limits on number of posts a member can make within the first 24 hours and where they can post to try and prevent spam attacks

I missed this one, but it does appear that the same poster has created the same thread with the same title repeatedly - surely that would be fairly easy to detect and prevent? I haven't thought about it much, but I can't think of a valid reason for that to be happening.

[Jonny_]

Cheers Ben.

Can't imagine that these spammers get much of a reward to effort ratio, after all, how many people go on PH on a weekday morning and think "yes, that's what I need, a specific type of pill in the Middle East"?

Presumably there are commercially available filtering algorithms similar to those used by Gmail, Outlook and the like to keep ones inbox free of such rubbish, can these be " baked in" to the forum software?

[originals]

Happening again right now.

About 30 threads at the moment.

[LankyFreak]

Jonny_ said:

Cheers Ben.
how many people go on PH on a weekday morning and think "yes, that's what I need, a specific type of pill in the Middle East"?
rubbish, can these be " baked in" to the forum software?

While most likely a scam, if this is real its providing a pretty important service IMO

I get a giggle out of the ste wording too..