VCCA Home Forums GENERAL DISCUSSION General Discussions August 30 Hacking of this Site

I am curious whether all the erroneous entries on all the forums that appeared this morning was done by robot software or a human being.

I saw it also. Curious if it was a lot of work to get rid of it.

I only saw the 1 spam posting by a newby not long after it was posted and put them on the permanent ban list, going by this thread there were more that I didnt see. I check all newbys for posts, if no postings I give them benefit of doubt but if I find they have left a spam posting they go onto the permanent ban list. I havent learnt how to delete the postings yet though.
Tony

It took me nearly an hour to remove the spam posts, permanently ban the poster, edit a couple as an example for the poster if he ever returned to view his handy work and notify moderators. I believe the faster we remove the crap the less negative effect it will have.

In that case there must have been more posts that I didnt see, The only 1 I saw was very nearly the first posting on the forum and only 3 or 4 hours old but I dont read all sections either.
Tony

I've mentioned this before without success but the Mods & Administrators might want to look at a different way of handling new users. We use it on another site using the same software where I'm a global mod. There, all new users have to have their first four posts reviewed and approved by a Moderator before the post becomes public. That way no spam is posted to the forums. If a spammer tries to post their detritus it's deleted along with the spammer without ever making it to public view. All Mods have the permissions to approve (or not) new users in any forum so it's not much of a burden on any one Mod. Something to consider.

In the past the first 3 posts were limited to New User Forum. Their status was "new user". That kept the Spammer from populating the site with crap. It seemed to give the moderators time to catch and eliminate the Spam. Apparently that is not still the case. I suspect that it was all manual as some forums had one and others multiple posts by this last guy.

I suspect that's no longer the case Chip since there've been several spammers posting in just the last month. It's a never ending battle.

I sent a notification on one of the spam posts. Maybe Peter will see it and make the necessary changes.

The 1st 3 posts rule seems to have disappeared when we changed to the current setup with Peter as admin. As I stated earlier I dont act until I see a newby that posts something that is not acceptable. I read the sections I am interested in then welcome to new members after checking any posts they have made, if no unacceptable posts I dont adjust anything bad a bad post gets permanent ban.
I agree the 3 post rule should come back as it kept a lot of the rubbish out.
Tony