Spam clean-up list

I have the ability to choose my own words rather than copy yours, which is something you repeatedly do with mine but don’t start putting words into my mouth.

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Is there any update on the spam situation anyone?

Ho Torsten,

I see you’re currently online. Thanks for clearing the 58 spambots which invaded over the last 12 hours. Is there any news on a fix?

Hi Bev, the tech company returns on Monday. They are very motivated and I’m sure they will also post an update here on the forum to speed up the communication process.

TOEFL listening lectures: What is the professor’s opinion of Ragwort?

Thank you for keeping us informed.

Here is another spammer that managed to post as a guest:
Ruhul23

The post also contains links.

What was interesting about that post is that a registered spammer named Ruhul230 was spam-posting at the very same time.

It might be worth investigating all users starting with rinarose and appended with a 2 or 3 digit number too. Although the spam has been cleared, the bots are still listed as members in the memberlist and their deleted posts are still counted.

I hope the tech company have some ideas tomorrow. Motivation alone won’t really be enough. It’s become obvious over the last 24 hours that they’re going to need a better plan than ‘strip the links’, which only seems to be inconveniencing the genuine users.
(Exactly how many posts do you have to produce before hyperlinks are allowed now? It seems that it has to be more than 22,223!)

I appreciate that coming from a non-technical background, answers which to me seem obvious are not always practical, but as a temporary solution perhaps it could be arranged that membership remains automatic (new members are accepted as they are now), but a members’ first post required moderation and they were unable to make consecutive posts until the first post was accepted.

Guys,
As discussed, the anti-spam patch was installed on Saturday. As per our logs, the spam should have been cut now
However, would appreciate your feedback about this

Sincerely,
Serge

Hi Serge,

This user apparently found a way to circumvent the anti spam filter:

Although now I see a great deal less spammers than I did before, so I guess the patch works.
Thanks for your efforts!

Hello Our Tort,

At last a good news!!! Touch the wood.

Many thanks:
Kati Svaby

Guys,
The current anti-spam solution isolates only the hyperlinks with the protocol part (the “http” followed by colon and two slashes). I guess we also need to take care of the links that go without that part (e.g. www.google.com)

Sincerely,
Serge

Hello Torsten,

I see the Serge 999’ letter so I know what is the reason that the hyperlinks can’t go through.The anti-spam isolates them. Congratulations on this result.This is the most important NOW.

Regards:
Kati Svaby

There are still too many spam mails getting through this so called solution. Just wait till next weekend when the sporting fixtures reappear.
Something needs to be done beyond isolating links.

How can the spammers post links when ordinary members cannot even post links within the english-test.net domain?

This is not a solution, I’m afraid. It’s just an extra problem.

Thanks for your efforts Serge. I think we need to monitor the spam that is still getting through, and make the filter stricter as necessary, in order to keep spam at acceptable levels. If the filter is too regularly circumvented, or has to get so strict that it impairs genuine users, then another solution may be necessary I think, such as moderator approval for a user’s first few posts.

Also, I envisaged that the hyperlink ban would not apply to established users (based on time of membership and/or number of posts). However, I see that I cannot post links either. Is that by design?

Hello Serge,

Your letter on #1078 permalink I tried to copy it in one of my letters. But my letter didn’t go through. Answer was: hyperlinks not allowed.

I tried to write a letter to Torsten without copying your letter and it went through.

After from curiosity I copied only your letter(#1078) and it didn’t go through but I received a message that hyperlinks not allowed.

Could I ask you to make an attempt to send again your letter (#1078) to the Forum. I know that your first sending was successful but secondly you could’nt send it again. I think this is a technical problem that’s why I wrote to Torsten a p.m. because I didn’t find one only thread which would have been ready to send the copy of your letter and you will see that it is unable to send it again. I received always the answer: hyperlinks not allowed What could be its reason??? the link in it without http?

Torsten thought that I have problems with your letter and he didn’t think that I think of a technical problem .

Here is my letter and Torsten’s answer.

Hi Kati,
That’s right, you would have a problem with copying my yesterday’s message, as it contained a link to Google. I sent it just before we applied the “anti-links” patch. As the patch is now in place, I myself would not be able to repeat my yesterday’s message either.
Also, I would tend to agree with Beeesneees, what we have done so far is not a “real” solution. I’m afraid they will find a way to get over this soon. We just needed to stop them right now, without spending days on finding a right solution.
*-- *
Sincerely,
Serge

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Hello Serge,

Many thanks for your letter and now I understand something from this.
I try to send the link of this page because I am curious with this method we are able to send the link of a thread.

Bye:
Kati Svaby

P.s: I tried to send this letter with the link of this thread but it was written:
hyperlinks are not allowed
This means that we couldn’t send links with this method.

Hi Serge,
Thank you for confirming that you are still working on this. I was worried that you would think everything was now fine and stop looking for a solution.
I suspect that when there is another major sporting event, this will trigger another wave of spam posts by bots.

Also I’m glad you seem to agree that removing the ability to post links (including internal links) has actually seriously limited the functionality of the forums for all the genuine members. Torsten’s original explanation (which I cannot provide a link to for obvious reasons, but which you will find earlier in this thread was:

Hi Beeesneees,
Yes, confirmed on both points.
Stopping users from posting links is not a good solution. However, unfortunately, at this point we don’t have a “good” one. Any of the supposed fixes we can think of are infringing the users in this way or another
The worst part is that we still don’t know who/what is driving the spammers. As per the review of their activity, part of them is bots - while the other part is humans. And I would say the human part will soon find a workaround (unless the whole process becomes economically unreasonable to them)

Sincerely,
Serge

Does this mean that it is not technically viable to place a new member’s first posts into some form of ‘moderation’ so that spammers can be weeded out before they reach the forums and genuine current members are not affected?