Mad influx of spammers!

I had it set up to approve members before letting them become registered but I removed that feature about a day prior to us getting the news of new toys. The problem in approving accounts is that it can only be done by an administrator and also an even bigger problem is the fact that we get so many per day that if I have to sit and go through every member it will take me several hours each day to do so. Truthfully Im not about to spend hours approving members so we'll just have to ban them for now and I can prune the ban list later.

One more way of smoking out spammers is by watching their 'about me' profile! Check on this guy:http://www.thundercatslair.org/forums/member.php?u=7112 Biography and Interest are enough to convince you he is a root of evil!

In the first place i thought he was ok, he did even post a seemingly ok thread but apparently he is a spammer. http://www.thundercatslair.org/forums/showthread.php?p=33959#post33959

I banned him right away

Yeah sometimes spammers will post a seemingly innocent but generic "hi I'm new thread" but the devil is in their signature links etc. You're right, you can tell if not by the bizarre username, the profile is off.

Just wanted to let everyone know from the team that today i've deleted at least 10 Spammers-posts! They, somehow, manage to get through and post threads, most of them are about Sex and incomprehensible staff:mad:
I've 'physically removed' them and deleted their posts but they keep coming:mad:

Yeah, I guess it's saturday and they have nothing better to do. I nabbed a few of those jerks myself. I've been trying to ban people I see active on the boards or newly registered too when their profiles come back as spam, hoping to get them before they can post, regardless of where in the alphabet they are. sometimes it works...sometimes they get their spam posted first. It's like the wild west - who's faster on the draw? lol

Are you also banning the posters when you clear the thread or posts? That will keep the same dude from coming right back anyway.

"Purrsia, post: 34234" said:

Are you also banning the posters when you clear the thread or posts? That will keep the same dude from coming right back anyway.

Yes of course, i ban them too.

Purrsia i think we should make a board announcement, addressing to our New members or those who are considering to join the Lair and tell them to pick meaningful User-names, choose an Avatar and write a few things in the 'About me' section. In this way it will be much easier and faster for us moderators, to smoke out the spammers and avoid banning falsely any genuine member .

What do you say?

"Lordore, post: 34235" said:

Yes of course, i ban them too.

Purrsia i think we should make a board announcement, addressing to our New members or those who are considering to join the Lair and tell them to pick meaningful User-names, choose an Avatar and write a few things in the 'About me' section. In this way it will be much easier and faster for us moderators, to smoke out the spammers and avoid banning falsely any genuine member .

What do you say?

You need to talk to the board admin's about this as they are in charge of dealing with these kinda sugestions :)

idk, we discussed this briefly in another thread and there was some concern whether this would tip off the spammers on what we look for to delete them.

Also, in my experience, to put it nicely - people don't tend to read or follow instructions. Yeah, I'm a little cynical. But it comes from this - I have my own board set on mod-approval only for new members. I posted an announcement like you suggested for here on my board telling people that if it's taking a long time for you to get approved maybe email me that you're not a spammer as if you didn't leave me any good clues that you aren't one, then there you will sit.

However, I still get members coming in with scant profiles and there's just no way to tell wtf is going on with them. I never hear from them. So who knows how many legit people I lose on my board due to cluelessness and/or laziness. :eek:

My concern with that criteria here (of course, we're not doing the mod approval, so that notwithstanding) is that it won't really help because most people will not see or pay attention to our request, so our job will not be made any easier by it and probably the only thing it would do is possibly help spammers that aren't bots anyway, skirt the system. Thems my two cents ;)


Also wanted to add that we only got what, 2 legit users in the last huge banning purge and that's not bad considering how many accounts we nailed with the ban hammer. To those people, maybe I would explain that we banned them because we couldn't be sure they weren't spammers and that if they put something in their account that makes us feel like genuine tcats fans, it's far less likely to happen. As for a public announcement to that effect I'm not a huge fan, but as blackiecats pointed out, none of that is really up to me lol Just two-cents again :D

"blackiecats, post: 34239" said:

You need to talk to the board admin's about this as they are in charge of dealing with these kinda sugestions :)

I absolutely understand. I wasn't going to take authority and do it without your consent guys. I just asked Purrsia because i know she has a lot of experience.:thumbsup:

I made a similar announcement that if members do not validate their accounts that they are prone to be deleted. IMO an announcement of sorts is not going to make things any easier for us and it may tip off spammers as to what we're looking for (or not).

I do appreciate the input though and think it is a good one if people do follow it but as we know people generally tend not to follow instructions. Take the pic size as an example of a forum rule that very few people follow.

Its great that we have several people looking out after the forums and the overload I was having prior to you guys coming on board has eased quite a bit and made the forums a bit easier to tackle when it comes to spammers

Just to buoy us up a little bit!!

Here is our joint battle portrayed against the Evil forces of Spammers!:liono:thumbsup::mummra:

http://www.comicvine.com/25567-thundercats/105-207743/"" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">