Is it possible for someone to clear out all the bogus messages that got posted this morning?
Cheers!
LitterBug
First, they’re gone as of 11:15 PDT. Were they what I refer to as the ‘chinese misfortune cookies’?
Second, the red exclamation point in the lower right corner of the post is a link to report inappropriate material. FA is usually pretty good about housecleaning once alerted.
(Brought to you by another member of the e-neighborhood watch)
IMHO, a better question would be, is it possible to proactively patch the board - or authenticate new users - to prevent the spammers? (By the way, it’s Korean fortune cookies.)
Easier said than done, subscriptions for posts like these used to be done with robot’s and various means could be used to ensure you have a human the other end.
Now they employ the equivalent of call centers in low cost countries with humans to do the subscriptions.
Usually the posts have http links (sometimes in white text on a white background) to increase search engine ratings for the sites mentioned.
The flood of these messages continues.
Captcha, email verification, admin approvals, max. number of of messages per day for new users, etc. …a combination of these can be used to minimise spam.
Once it starts, they know it works and it won’t stop until some hard posting rules are enforced. Testedcom has been battling this too. In their case, they have found people to be making all the spam, not robots.
The poor will always be with you (Deut 15:11, Matt 26:11, Mk 14:7).
You can say it about spammers too. Complete eradication is impracticable, and efforts to fight it just make things more difficult everyone.
I suggest quick reporting when it appears, and let the FA staff deal with it. They appear to be very responsive and cannot check everything everywhere, all the time. Be a good netizen and alert them.
Thanks, didn’t see this set, all the prior ones I saw were chinese 
Common sense protections are smart. They have to be put in place or the forum will die. More spam again. It will not stop. These people get paid/forced to make these spam posts all day long.
Well there’s 8 pages of it in the last 30 minutes. Hitting report on these is pointless until someone wakes up and deals with it.
They use PHBB as their Base. I use it on a forum that I run. There is several very good robot deterrents on it.
Another thing they can do is start using IP bans. Ive used it and its very effective.
I used to do IP lookups to find the country doing the posting and ban the entire country if it was not one that was not used by regular posters … but I did get caught out when on holiday in Cape Verde when the IP range used by the hotel back tracked as Mali…
There are 32 pages of these now, growing steadily, there will be no genuine posts left soon.
35 pages now! Ridiculous.
I would be disabling new user registration until longer term solutions can be put in place.
Sorry we’re taking care of it, but easier said than done.
Thanks for your patience. We’ve cleaned out the spam, and have started taking more aggressive measures to prevent it in the future.
Thank you for the understatement of the day.
And thanks for clearing out the cast of thousands.
Time for Plan B?