[EMS Discuss] The "official" forum is getting spammed

[InEugene]

If you look at the "homepages" they've set up. It's pretty obvious they 
are spam accounts. There have been three additional accounts created 
since my initial email. The captcha doesn't seem to be helping. Fully 
1/3 of the accounts are now fake spam accounts. When the spammer creates 
an account on that forum they also have access to our first and last 
names. Not critical but I tried to change the name on my account from 
Nathan Worth to NathanW and somehow I now have two accounts. I'm curious 
on how the spammers got to your forum so fast. I would assume mine would 
have been hit because they are hosted on a free forum site, but I've had 
no problems. Feel free to take a look, you'll have to create an account 
to do so though as I have only general discussion open to non-members 
and nothing open to guests.

http://eugenemakerspace.freeforums.org/

-N



On 3/12/2012 6:43 PM, Mr. Clif wrote:
> That's interesting, thanks for pointing that out Nathan. Yes those
> accounts did get created but I only see that
> asd123 tried to post anything, and that was caught in the moderation
> queue as it should be. I'm looking for the other's messages but it says
> zero.
>
> As we discussed before we can adjust the number of messages someone must
> send that must be approved by the moderator. I'm not sure about this but
> wouldn't it be cool if that number of posts had to be actually approved
> before they could get out of the "moderation box". If true, then the
> spamers could only create accounts which will eventually be cleaned up
> like so much garbage. Additionally it's possible delete all of someones
> posts with their account but that may not even be necessary.
>
> Well as far as tradeoffs go, allowing genuine users easy account
> creation may be worth the trouble of deleting unused spam accounts once
> in awhile. There shouldn't be that many because there is a captcha test.
> On the other hand, there is a point of moderation either way. The
> Moderators either have to approve accounts or approve posts. I've found
> that asking them to fill out a form item like say "What are your
> interests" Doesn’t always work. eg, James didn't and I had to ask him if
> that account with a different email address was actually him. So.... It
> might be easier to just wait and see what their first post is.
>
> Clif
>
> InEugene wrote:
>> Looks like spam 7 accounts were created. Only one new post by one of
>> the spam accounts. 2 Friday, 2 Saturday, 1 Sunday, 2 today. Odd, the
>> links they posted are mostly German. No spam on the "unofficial"
>> forums I created. Neither accounts nor posts. Not sure why that is.
>>
>> - Nathan
>> _______________________________________________
>> Discuss mailing list
>> EMAIL HIDDEN
>> http://eugenemakerspace.com/mailman/listinfo/com.eugenemakerspace.discuss
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> EMAIL HIDDEN
> http://eugenemakerspace.com/mailman/listinfo/com.eugenemakerspace.discuss
>