Spam Update

[Kyle]

Over the past 24-36 hours we were overloaded with spam registrations and posts. There has always been a trickle of spam over the years but this episode was dramatically worse than usual. We are now configured with Akismet which should help regulate this problem. If anyone notices any new registrations or posts please continue to let us know.

Thanks =)

[Mandy]

Akismet is awesome news! Thanks, Kyle!

[Cattrix]

Good, I reported two of those.
I'm on a couple of different boards and groups, sewing, antique sewing machines and a health forum, and one of the tricks that spammers use is cutting and pasting bits of previous posts of other users and contriving a seeminly legit post and then adding links and crud to the bottom of the cut and paste post.

[Mandy]

Thank you for reporting those. And, yeah, they are pretty sneaky. I was watching the online users just now and clicked one that had a funny name and banned/deleted them before they could even post. Yay! LOL (They had a similar profile as the other spam accounts, otherwise I wouldn't have just assumed based on the username.)

[JumpSpidersInc]

<-- is an expert at catching spammers. This actually was a "hobby" of mine not so long ago.

Glad this step was taken to stop these spammers!

If I may ask, is the forum configured with Akismet thru SFS? If so, that was an awesome move!

[Ungoliant]

It seems like most of the spam posts end up on the "Off Topic Discussion" board for some reason. That is probably a blessing in disguise, since newer guests are less likely to be looking there.

I've been deleting the posts and banning the posters as I see them.

[Mandy]

It seems like most of the spam posts end up on the "Off Topic Discussion" board for some reason. That is probably a blessing in disguise, since newer guests are less likely to be looking there.

Oh, good point!

[Kyle]

I installed a plugin last night that has stopped spam. The previous spam blocking plugin allowed anyone to register and flagged spam posts as 'moderated'. Posts flagged as 'moderated' would not show up to the public and only to admins/moderators. This was annoying because then we had to take a manual step in removing spam posts AND identify and remove spam accounts.

This new plugin actually checks the IP address and email used in registration with Akismet and other spammer databases. So far this has been 100% effective with no false positives. I'm sure spammers will get through here and there, but we're in a better place now than we were before this recent spam wave happened!

[Ungoliant]

Good deal!

[JumpSpidersInc]

Awesome, Kyle! Glad to hear this!