What Can we Do?

[k1w1taxi]

I know that admin spends far too much time checking and deleting spam, but logging on today after about 10 days or so of not checking I find every single section has new posts 98% of which are either Helium spam or invitations to see Britney sucking something.

Is there not some way we can prevent this happening. If it means that it is a little more difficult for me to post I am prepared to accept that to not continue to be regularly assailed with this crap.

Failing that does anyone know a really good hacker/programmer that can help us fight back, perhaps a nice auto dialler/clicker program to jam the helium sites with so many clicks that they go broke paying our friend Z.

Cheers
Lee

[SoulThief]

Sorry, I changed from adsl to adsl2 and my isp managed to completely wreck everything. Hence i have been off-line for several weeks **sigh**

I am going through deleting what spam I can. At present only Rick and I moderate. I guess a few other old-timers could volunteer to help moderate

ST

[HomieBear]

I'm not really an old-timer but I don't mind having spam-deleting powers if it will help keep this site spam-free. It's so annoying.
None of those old stories that foresaw the internet ever predicted spam, that's for sure.

[Brightonian]

Hmm, which "old stories" predicted the Internet?

I can only think of John Brunner's Shockwave Rider, which AFAIK also introduced the terms "virus" and "worm". However, that was more of an extrapolation of existing technology than a prediction, as ARPAnet was already up and running in 1975.

[HomieBear]

There was an old (1950s) Arthur C. Clarke story which had a computer establish a global communications network and then promptly take it over. Lots of others too, though details are hazy right now.

[SoulThief]

As Rick is the owner of the site we need to wait for him to approve any new moderators. But thanks for offering. We'll see what he says

ST

[admin]

Well, at least for the moment, as far as I can tell, all the spam is gone. Of course, the hours I spent deleting the spam are gone, too.

Thanks for your help, Soul Thief. And HomieBear is now an administrator.

I assume the people posting all these spam messages are poor people in India, who are paid a cent or a fraction of a cent for every spam they post. They seem to be individuals, rather than bots. As soon as I block them under one name, they come back under another name. They seem to post from 0 to 12 posts, mostly identical, before changing names. I'm not sure why they post in so many different threads, but I guess they get paid something for each thread and then something for each post in that thread. I wish I understood better how it works.

There are several things that would be a big help. If I could delete all the posts by a given user, or remove a user from membership instead of just blocking that user from posting, or if I could delete a thread instead of only being able to delete by topic. Or if I could block all messages containing a particular up address.

When I look up the up address of the spam poster, I'm told they are posting from my up address. Don't know how the do that.

Anyway, thanks again for the help.

Rick

[shrike522]

Hello I don't see the spam as being gone.
shrike522

[admin]

The problem is that the spammers are adding spam as fast as I delete it. Sout Thief and HomieBear have joined in the work of deleting spam, but the posters, who I assume are being paid to post spam anywhere and everywhere, just keep on going. As soon as I block one name, they sign up under another name. Also, they use an ip address of a major server, so that I can't block them that way. If you know any way to stop this, please let me know. I would hate for sfsite forum to die because of this problem. Of course, the spammers don't care, since the must get paid even if all their spam gets deleted.

Rick

[SoulThief]

I think that we are going to have to examine our registration options etc.

I will look into it

ST