Increasing Spam on Forum

[Festus2]

You've probably noticed that there has been an increasing amount of spam posts appearing on the forum lately. Many of these spammers are now using "legitimate" gmail addresses as an email confirmation when they register.

At the present time, there doesn't appear to be any quick fix other than for us to delete their posts and ban these forum pests as soon as they are discovered.

The Moderators have received emails from several members informing us of these posts and we are responding as quickly as possible. We are also trying to keep a close watch for spam and spammers but sometimes we don't get to them as soon as we would like. We can't monitor the forum 24/7 but are doing the best we can.

We appreciate your assistance by sending us emails when you do spot one of these rambling, nonsensical posts. The Moderators will see them and deal with them when we are on the forum. You may see them before we do so please be patient - they will be deleted and the spammer banned by one of the Moderators when he/she comes online.

We would ask that you do not click on any of the links that appear in these posts. By doing so, you are opening the door a bit wider to allow more of these characters to send their garbage to us. Also, please refrain from responding to a post that you think might contain spam or was submitted by a spammer. These posts are quite easy to recognize -- they have nothing to do with RVing, are usually without capital letters or punctuation and make about as much sense as the person who submitted it.

Hopefully, the number of spam posts and spammers will live a short life and disappear from our forum.

[HappyCamperMN]

Is reporting the post via the 'report post' link the best way to alert the proper authorities about the spam?

[JRTJH]

Clicking on the "Report Post" link will get an email message to each of the moderators. That email goes to all 5 moderators, so whoever happens to check email first will get the message and take care of the issue with that forum post.

As Festus2 said, don't click on any links in the SPAM, let us know and don't respond to the SPAM by posting in the thread. Our usual resolution is to ban the SPAMMER, permanently add that IP to the "ban list" and then delete the thread or the post. If members have responded to the SPAM by posting in the thread, it's just that much more to delete, so let us know, but don't post after the SPAM.

Report the post and we'll take care of it ASAP.

Thanks for helping keep the forum open, on track and related to Keystone RVing, not something totally unrelated.

[Festus2]

Clicking on the "Report Post" link will get an email message to each of the moderators. That email goes to all 5 moderators, so whoever happens to check email first will get the message and take care of the issue with that forum post.

Report the post and we'll take care of it ASAP.

.

To what JRTJH has said, I would add that if you come across a post that is obviously spam, you might want to wait a bit before sending a "Report Post" out to all of the Moderators. Two of our Moderators who live in eastern USA are almost always on the forum early in the morning and "catch" most of these posts early in the day.

So give us time to get online, go through the posts and delete the spam. If you see that they are still "active" after a reasonable wait time, then by all means, send a Report Post email.

If we can deal with these nuisance posts in a timely manner without having our own personal email Inbox with 6 or 7 Report Post emails from 6 or 7 different members telling us about the same spam post, that would help.

Having said that, please don't hesitate to report a post that, for some reason, has been on the forum for "too long". Your diligence and co-operation are appreciated.

Thank you.

[Courtland]

I just wanted to provide an update on this, as Richard has stated these spammers are using real email account from @gmail.com, @hotmail.com and other sites as well. This gives them the ability to go through the registration process and register as everyone else does.

As you are aware the moderators ban these spammers and and try and keep them off our forum, on the back end I am am also banning their IP addresses and trying to prevent them from getting to the forum at all. Banning a specific IP or a range of IP addresses is fairly easy, but ensuring that I don't over commit and ban our regular forum members is difficult. The latest trick I am seeing from these spammers is that they are using Virtual Servers here in the USA when posting their junk, this becomes a very tricky situation as I want to allow users of of the forum to get to the forum but prevent the spammers from getting access. So I am having to ban specific IPs and ensure I do not interfere with a regular member getting to our forum.

Please be patient as we are doing the best we can to prevent these nuisance posters from being on the forum, but it make take some time as we are trying to ensure we do not affect legitimate users of the forum.

Courtland

[Scttw]

I deal with these spammers on my Local car club site ..... we're a very active VB site with 300-500 active people on the board at any one time.

As mentioned you can only ban the IP address if it's unique to that user and not dynamically shared in an area. In Canada for example BELL is unique to a computer but Rogers is shared.

The way I have overcome this is to force people to post an introduction thread first - this moves them from "Registered user" to "New Member". A New Member can then post in any forum. But before the Introduction post goes up - it must be "Approved" first by any moderator. This is the key to stopping the spammers.

Some spammers will still try and fake it - but it will actually stop 90% from going through this process to spam. It also makes people say "Hi", and creates the community that it's so obvious you are thriving for.

my 2 cents,

PS - I assume you have multiple user creation turned "off" :)

Scott

Edit is in red .....