Suggestion for spam reduction

After seeing some douchebag just spam this site again, a thought of an idea on how to reduce spam.  Seeing as how most of it comes in the form of new threads/posts with a hyperlink in them, maybe you could make a rule saying you need X amount of posts before you can post a hyperlink in a message OR in you signature.  Then if a post is made with a hyperlink, it gets rejected.  What do you think about this mods/admins?

very nice idea

a min or 5 normal posts before posting links and stuff..

Anbe Sivam. Period.

I'd suggest 100 posts in order to have this permission....
but I am no computer geek...ain't a link just text ??? how do you reject that ???

Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.

the same way a line of text is being displayed as a link. The coding for the page checks it before putting it up on the page in the form of a link.

Btw, this page uses what? Java?

Anbe Sivam. Period.

^ exactly.  When it detects something that it would normally turn blue, underline, then make a link, instead it would check the user's post count before making it a link, then it would either successfully create the link or reject the post alltogether.  Sounds like it would be pretty easy to code to me.

yea..

3 years since I coded anything :D
But I do remember coding for string scanning and stuff in my lab exercises.

Anbe Sivam. Period.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Spammers bug me to know end and I'll do anything I can to keep them off this site and limit their activity. Unfortunately, being a public forum, we're a big target for spam posts.

I've thought about implementing this exact feature a while ago but in the end I thought it would hurt more then it helps.

If you require only 5 posts before allowing members to post links, a spammer will just make 5 bogus spam posts and then start spamming their link. So the spammer still wins... but new members who want to link to something legitimately loose.

If you require 100 posts before a member could post a link the spammer would just create the same posts but instead of a hyperlink, they'll just tell the user to copy and paste the URL into their browser. I'd prefer this myself because we're not physically linking to their site. But, at the end of the day the spammer still wins and the legitimate new members are the ones who are hurt.

In both cases, the spammer can still get away with spamming and the only people truly affected by this change are our new members. I'm trying my best to make new members happy and keep them sticking around on this site. Limiting things like linking to other sites would cause some new members to get fed up and leave and/or stop posting here.

The best we can do at this time is just to have you guys report any spam posts you see. Admins and mods can delete the posts and ban both that person's username as well as their IP address. I go through 2-3 times a day checking tickets to see if anyone reported anything like spam. So if you see it before me, report it so I can ban them and remove their junk posts from our forum.

Kris Anderson
Have you ordered from Supplements101.com yet?

cool! very nice.

Anbe Sivam. Period.

Kris


Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Spammers bug me to know end and I'll do anything I can to keep them off this site and limit their activity. Unfortunately, being a public forum, we're a big target for spam posts.

I've thought about implementing this exact feature a while ago but in the end I thought it would hurt more then it helps.

If you require only 5 posts before allowing members to post links, a spammer will just make 5 bogus spam posts and then start spamming their link. So the spammer still wins... but new members who want to link to something legitimately loose.

If you require 100 posts before a member could post a link the spammer would just create the same posts but instead of a hyperlink, they'll just tell the user to copy and paste the URL into their browser. I'd prefer this myself because we're not physically linking to their site. But, at the end of the day the spammer still wins and the legitimate new members are the ones who are hurt.

In both cases, the spammer can still get away with spamming and the only people truly affected by this change are our new members. I'm trying my best to make new members happy and keep them sticking around on this site. Limiting things like linking to other sites would cause some new members to get fed up and leave and/or stop posting here.

The best we can do at this time is just to have you guys report any spam posts you see. Admins and mods can delete the posts and ban both that person's username as well as their IP address. I go through 2-3 times a day checking tickets to see if anyone reported anything like spam. So if you see it before me, report it so I can ban them and remove their junk posts from our forum.

I don't really know how spammers operate, but I didn't think they looked at any details of each individual site, but rather had more of an automated process of spamming that they would use for multiple websites.  If that was the case (automated spamming), then they would actually have to sit and read the website's rules and spend extra time spamming this one site if their post got rejected, when they could be spending that time moving on to other sites and posting more messages.  I think all you really have to do is find a way to deter people from quickly getting their messages out.

Also, is there any way you could make a string comparison that compares users' posts with their other recent posts, and if the similarity is greater than, say, 95%, the post gets rejected?  Or maybe if you have something that detects any link they post and see if they have posted that same link in a recent post.  I don't ever see that affecting any legit user.

NBSFighter

Kris


Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Spammers bug me to know end and I'll do anything I can to keep them off this site and limit their activity. Unfortunately, being a public forum, we're a big target for spam posts.

I've thought about implementing this exact feature a while ago but in the end I thought it would hurt more then it helps.

If you require only 5 posts before allowing members to post links, a spammer will just make 5 bogus spam posts and then start spamming their link. So the spammer still wins... but new members who want to link to something legitimately loose.

If you require 100 posts before a member could post a link the spammer would just create the same posts but instead of a hyperlink, they'll just tell the user to copy and paste the URL into their browser. I'd prefer this myself because we're not physically linking to their site. But, at the end of the day the spammer still wins and the legitimate new members are the ones who are hurt.

In both cases, the spammer can still get away with spamming and the only people truly affected by this change are our new members. I'm trying my best to make new members happy and keep them sticking around on this site. Limiting things like linking to other sites would cause some new members to get fed up and leave and/or stop posting here.

The best we can do at this time is just to have you guys report any spam posts you see. Admins and mods can delete the posts and ban both that person's username as well as their IP address. I go through 2-3 times a day checking tickets to see if anyone reported anything like spam. So if you see it before me, report it so I can ban them and remove their junk posts from our forum.

I don't really know how spammers operate, but I didn't think they looked at any details of each individual site, but rather had more of an automated process of spamming that they would use for multiple websites.  If that was the case (automated spamming), then they would actually have to sit and read the website's rules and spend extra time spamming this one site if their post got rejected, when they could be spending that time moving on to other sites and posting more messages.  I think all you really have to do is find a way to deter people from quickly getting their messages out.

Also, is there any way you could make a string comparison that compares users' posts with their other recent posts, and if the similarity is greater than, say, 95%, the post gets rejected?  Or maybe if you have something that detects any link they post and see if they have posted that same link in a recent post.  I don't ever see that affecting any legit user.

There is automated spam software out there... but since we use that image/code thing for registration and for logging in an automated program can't post on this site.

The spammers that we get are real people. They visit the site, register by hand, confirm their confirmation email, and then post their spam. The spam they post is most likely pre typed and they simply paste it onto this site... but the process of getting to the point of pasting that text is all done by the spammer him/herself.

Spammers (like almost all members) do not care nor do they read the rules. The problem is, if we require 5 posts before links start showing up in their posts, we would have to have some sort of notification for a user with less then 5 posts when they try to post a link. If Bob has 3 posts but tries to post a link, our forum would tell him he needs to have at least 5 posts before posting that link. This means that a spammer would be given this same information and they would si mply create 5 garbage posts just to enable link posting.

Some of the smart(er) spammers out there these days visit sites and make 30-50 posts to build up their post count. They're simple things... like replying to a thread only saying "I agree." But after they reach 30-50 posts they'll post a link to whatever they're trying to profit from. It's hard(er) to find these spammers then the super obvious ones.

I like your last suggestion though. Perhaps a comparison can be done to compare a new post with the previous 2-3 posts to see if they're similar.  Not only would this help stop multiple pages of the same spam, but it would stop new members who post the same question in 2-3 different forums. I'll make a suggestion to the developer of this forum software and see what he thinks.

This doesn't really solve the main issue with spam though. I'd say 90% or more of our spam is just a single post. Very rarely do we get 3-5 posts with the same spam content. But at the same time, at least it's a step forward into limiting the total amount of spam this site receives.

Kris Anderson
Have you ordered from Supplements101.com yet?

wow...I didn't understand $hit about what you said but I like it !
But would having them type like 50 posts before addind string a good idea...would a spammer really take the time to do it ??? It would ruin some spammer's fun....

And also, if a member with 3 posts wants to add a stering, he'd have to send Admins a PM with some good reasons...then he'd be able to ...no ???

Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.

Nic


wow...I didn't understand $hit about what you said but I like it !
But would having them type like 50 posts before addind string a good idea...would a spammer really take the time to do it ??? It would ruin some spammer's fun....

And also, if a member with 3 posts wants to add a stering, he'd have to send Admins a PM with some good reasons...then he'd be able to ...no ???

I'm not sure what you mean by "adding a string", but all we are saying is to do a comparison of users' posts.  Basically, it would compare someone's post to their most recent post, and if the two match up, then the post gets rejected.  This not only keeps people from posting the same spam message multiple times, but also keeps newbs from posting the same new thread in 3 diff forums (like kris said)

I meant adding a link...

Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.

Oh i see.  yeah kris pretty much tossed that idea