Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

The Final Dakar · Feb 12, 2014, 01:55 PM

Spheric Harlot · Feb 12, 2014, 03:43 PM

If I had my choice of prize, I'd rather those be Hammond organ consoles.

ghporter · Mar 3, 2014, 09:49 PM

February Results: (Please don't be shocked by my posting them only 3 days into the new month!)

subego and Spheric Harlot tied with one report each. Frankly, it was more exciting a month in spam reports than many recent months, because there were far fewer ambiguous or other goofy posts to sort through.

Keep up the great work, folks!

Mar 17, 2014, 07:26 PM

MacNN Forums - View Profile: ElizabethDChenier

Spammer

I tried reporting one of the posts, but when I clicked on "Send Report" button, the webpage just hanged and nothing happened.

ghporter · Mar 21, 2014, 01:21 PM

Oops, sounds like you ran into a server glitch. The report actually did go through, twice. You just didn't get the feedback that said it worked that you expected.

Mar 21, 2014, 02:19 PM

Interesting...

Ω · Mar 21, 2014, 08:23 PM

The spam over at AI is much more exciting. Hundreds a day and no apparent way of stopping it. Huddler for the win!

ghporter · Mar 22, 2014, 09:23 AM

Let's not be sore winners. At least not quite so blatantly so....

P · Mar 22, 2014, 10:42 AM

But something has changed. I used to log on in the morning CET and find several pieces of spam every day. Now we have a couple a month at worst.

ghporter · Mar 22, 2014, 03:27 PM

Our perimeter is protected by a robust set of tools that different forums use to share spammer information, so if others have noticed a particular "new member" is a spammer, we know about it before they even try to register. We also have a working (if odd) CAPTCHA system that blocks many registration bots. And somehow, the bots can't manage to effectively reply to the registration email...

roll · Mar 27, 2014, 08:21 AM

Great job. Thanks

turtle777 · Mar 28, 2014, 08:53 PM

LOL, you registered to post that ?

We'll be watching you

-t

ghporter · Apr 6, 2014, 10:13 AM

In March, two spammers got through our shields. There were a couple of ambiguously "spammish" posts, but these two were obviously and clearly spammers.

And.reg and Ω reported one spammer each. And.reg's was a not-so-clever "go to this site and earn bazilions of usdollars a day" type, while Ω's was a Runescape Diablo III gold dealer. Neither spammer managed to post in a thread that could possibly have anything to do with their wares... Shows how dim they are, I guess.

Thanks for the diligence, folks! April has started out with a few honest to dog spammers already. They may be dim, but they're not unmotivated. Thanks in advance for keeping at it.

ghporter · May 5, 2014, 06:53 AM

April featured three different spammers, with three different members reporting them first. Special kudos to Spheric Harlot who remembered "nielpat" and his/her/its spam for some sort of iPad case.

Tie:
Ω -- 1
Spheric Harlot -- 1
turtle 777 -- 1

April also saw the teturn of the dreaded "wall of cell phone" spammers. Usually these are stopped by the numerous safeguards built into the site (both from vBull and its extensions and those crafted atop them by reader50), but not in April. Hopefully this doesn't foreshadow more of the buggers sneaking in, but I have noted before that we may have been having more quiet on the spam front than we should be expecting.

ghporter · Jun 7, 2014, 10:31 AM

And now for May... It was busier than April! But only by one spammer. On the other hand, it wasn't as even as April, as these numbers will show:

Spheric Harlot: 3
turtle 777: 1

And that was all that got through. Great work folks!

ghporter · Jul 6, 2014, 08:54 AM

June results are in! It wasn't as busy as May or April, and our staff was on top of a couple of "interesting" attempts to spammify our lovely forums. But again, without the help of our Diligent Members, we'd have had some serious problems.

Results:
Spheric Harlot - 1
Ω - 1

Really. No repeats or multi-posting chaos. We got the reports and stopped the spammers (relatively) cold. Thanks again, folks!

ghporter · Aug 2, 2014, 12:46 PM

It's that time again. There were three valid spammer reports from regular members, and Spheric Harlot got all of them. Staff members caught 4 spammers, but we don't count in the contest (and we can snip the spammers fast enough that most users never even see them...).

Thanks again, and let's keep it up. A spam-free forum is a happy, healthy forum!

ghporter · Sep 13, 2014, 07:08 AM

I'm a little late reporting August's results because....I'm just getting to it. August was busy for spammers and our wonderful users - but much more successful for our users!! Here's how it shook out:

turtle 777 --2
Waragainstsleep --2
badidea --1
mattyb --1
Spheric Harlot --1
subego --1
The Final Dakar --1

9 different spammers, only one managed to post more than once. And someone beat Spheric Harlot to the punch on at least one report. Great work folks!

turtle777 · Sep 13, 2014, 10:13 AM

Spheric was probably on vacation

-t

Spheric Harlot · Sep 13, 2014, 11:17 AM

Hah.

The Final Dakar · Sep 15, 2014, 09:49 AM

ghporter · Oct 11, 2014, 08:21 AM

And so, about one weekend late, here are the results from September:

mattyb ..... 2
Spheric Harlot ..... 2

A dead heat, yes, but good for us. We use some really good filtering, and some exceptional forum-to-borum tools to block spammers, and yet they still attack, and a few still get through. But not far, and not for long, thanks to our Dilligent and Alert Members! Thanks again for everyone's efforts.

mattyb · Oct 11, 2014, 06:05 PM

Can't even come first in a spam reporting contest boo hoo.