SPAM

[Gerald Cafferty]

I like to search for content via the (Unread Content) link. This still works for me apart from all the spam it reveals, is this something you can clear out Sandy.😄

[Gerald Cafferty]

I've just noted that (Member Albums) is also full of what I consider Spam! 

[Sandy Vongries]

I spend 40 minutes to an hour clearing spam when I first get up and more in the course of the day.  Spam filters on this platform aren't particularly good.  

[Sanford]

I think if your are "paid up" you don't see the spam. I don't know if non-members still can see it on my site.

[Sandy Vongries]

Spam and Paid advertising are quite different. If the site is not set up so that members can pay, I believe what we are seeing is just spam rather than advertising.

[Gerald Cafferty]

Thankyou Sandy you've taken care of that excellently, in future I will be more patient and not bother you.   

[Sandy Vongries]

No prob - just remember I am on U.S. Mountain Time. Feel free to report when I am awake!

[PapaTango]

50 minutes ago, Sanford said:

I think if your are "paid up" you don't see the spam. I don't know if non-members still can see it on my site.

A humongous no here, Sanford!  Some sites that host advertising and have paid memberships offer the ability to hide or limit advertising as part of the value proposition of subscription.  None of our various iterations of the last few years have sponsored outside advertising--outside of what Creative Live or our new owners have put up for themselves.

At one time the two levels--Member & Pro--were different.  Right now, they are just artifacts of a previous forum platforms, and are not connected to any ability to subscribe, which seems to be turned off.  As Matt Jensen once posted somewhere here, the Pro title just carried over from the migration.  As best I can tell, both groups have exactly the same permissions now.  

We should be very glad that we have Sandy and our other moderators.  Without them, this place would be completely filled with noxious rubbish and fairly useless.  

 

 

Edited January 17, 2023 by PapaTango

[Tony Parsons]

Other than the advertising (which is a 'necessary evil'), there are also other SPAM postings appearing, but the facility to report these seems to have vanished, unless i am looking in the wrong place ?

https://www.photo.net/forums/topic/537810-body-massage-center-queen-spa/?do=getNewComment

I consider these two to be SPAM at the very least, if not attempts to insinuate malicious links.

 

Update - loos as if one has gone, anyway.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Tony Parsons

[Sandy Vongries]

8 minutes ago, Tony Parsons said:

Other than the advertising (which is a 'necessary evil'), there are also other SPAM postings appearing, but the facility to report these seems to have vanished, unless i am looking in the wrong place ?

https://www.photo.net/forums/topic/537810-body-massage-center-queen-spa/?do=getNewComment

I consider these two to be SPAM at the very least, if not attempts to insinuate malicious links.

 

Update - loos as if one has gone, anyway.

Been banning them for the last half hour. Believe all are gone for now.  Three dots upper right hand corner, click and one choice is Report, those come to me.  Failing that, send me a note. I work spam on and off all day.

 

[PapaTango]

Click here in the thread window:

[Tony Parsons]

Thanks, both, for this - but using this method of reporting does involve opening the post - which, if it is malicious, is too late ! Is there a way to report suspicious postings before opening them, please ? I seem to recall this used to be an option.

[Sanford]

And I was actually looking for my best "Massage" photo...

[PapaTango]

The only thing that can be malicious in a forum post is malformed code posted or nasty links.  For fun I tried putting some known bad HTML and JS into a post.  No dice, so that's a good thing for us.  Links, well anyone can post those.

You may be remembering something from an earlier version of PN.  That was Xenforo, and neither it nor Invision have any mechanism for reporting a post before you open it.  This is true also for vBulletin, SMF, and WPForo.

The mods do have a way to see suspicious things--that's what keeps Sandy preoccupied!!!

[Mark Keefer]

Wow, just saw first time in years several blatent spam ads posted to gallery tonight. Looks like the forums just got rearranged too.

[je ne regrette rien]

On 1/17/2023 at 2:50 PM, Sandy Vongries said:

I spend 40 minutes to an hour clearing spam when I first get up and more in the course of the day.  Spam filters on this platform aren't particularly good.  

The gallery sports continuously ads (not the site-relevant ads, which are something different) from brand new accounts registered since a few hours. Probably there is a rule about what kind of content can be shared and whether the images can be of products or services, as there are.

I don't want to be in Sandy's shoes having to deal with this.

Nevertheless this "spam-ads" by PN members are very annoying in the gallery and sometimes quite inappropriate. It depends on the policy and on some kind of filtering technology deployed.

[Tony Parsons]

Just for information, reported six more examples of SPAM today.

 

We had less SPAM during the War - more Snoek, tho !

[Sandy Vongries]

As is the case nearly every morning, first order of businesses to remove the spam.  Unusually heavy load this a.m.  I do not believe there is any paid advertising at this time. Please keep reporting and I'll keep removing it.

[Tony Parsons]

Thanks, Sandy - greatly appreciated

[Mark Keefer]

18 hours ago, Sandy Vongries said:

As is the case nearly every morning, first order of businesses to remove the spam.  Unusually heavy load this a.m.  I do not believe there is any paid advertising at this time. Please keep reporting and I'll keep removing it.

Probably why I saw it, I am currently on the west coast and many time up at the wee hours before you are up. 

[Tony Parsons]

Amazing - today's selection offers me the opportunity to take a Gat test. Presumably not a pussy gat . . . 

[Tony Parsons]

And Peas ?

[Mark Keefer]

Perhaps new users photo uploads need to be vetted first before posted publicly. Once an admin sees the new user is posting legit photos, the member gets boosted to a higher level and their postings will no longer need to be vetted. This at least could slow spammers down.  

 

Or a new user gets a verification code sent to their phone. Once the phone number is logged that phone number can't be used for another spammer account. New user can post one image in 24 hours until vetted.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Mark Keefer

[Tony Parsons]

Following the advice in this thread and removing the side bar, I no longer see SPAM.

 

 

It only used to appear in the sidebar anyway for me, but when I open Photo.Net I automatically go to the Forums page, not the Home page - this may be another contributory factor. 

Tony

 

[Dustin McAmera]

The spam is beyond a joke this morning.

At Camera-wiki, spammers' registrations got so fast (many per minute) that a single admin couldn't keep up with banning them and undoing their edits. I'd say it's almost that bad here today. The oldest post on the first screen of 'All activity' is three minutes old, and that whole screen is spam.

I don't think deleting the spam discourages them. Even if the spammed business is Allied Shelving in Mumbai, it's not Allied Shelving that's doing the spam; they have signed up to a 'low-cost advertising' deal and probably don't know that it meant forum spam. The spammer is either a roomful of idiots paid a few cents per operation, or a computer program doing most of the operation on its own. I think they get paid once the spam is there; us deleting it afterward makes no difference to them.

At Camera-wiki we stopped the problem by stopping people from registering themselves; people who want to join in editing now have to contact us via Flickr and an admin creates their account. That's a minor job for an admin, and (we're a small group) rarely more than once a week. For us, it's little hardship: people wanting to edit the wiki ought to be serious enough about it to wait for an email exchange.