Unwelcome visitors

[Richardsk]

Hello all

This is not a Freestyle question, but Freestyle is the most active forum and so perhaps the best place to raise it.

What can be done about the disturbing tendency recently for spammers advertising sand filters, boots and who knows what else to crop up on the boards? Just ignore them and hope that the authorities will give them their marching orders or shower them with abuse and derision?

The second option is appealing but would probably do no good.

[CoachSuzanne]

Originally Posted by Richardsk

Hello all

This is not a Freestyle question, but Freestyle is the most active forum and so perhaps the best place to raise it.

What can be done about the disturbing tendency recently for spammers advertising sand filters, boots and who knows what else to crop up on the boards? Just ignore them and hope that the authorities will give them their marching orders or shower them with abuse and derision?

The second option is appealing but would probably do no good.

It's just a moderation question. It's the weekend and I know several peeps from TI central are out of town this weekend. Just ignore them and they'll be gone soon enough.

[terry]

I don't know what techno solutions are available.
Generally I just delete -- physically remove -- them when I come across.
I kind of doubt derision will dissuade. I think they may be posted by some kind of bot.

[jollyswimmer1973]

Originally Posted by terry

I don't know what techno solutions are available.
Generally I just delete -- physically remove -- them when I come across.
I kind of doubt derision will dissuade. I think they may be posted by some kind of bot.

The bots get through because there isn't any activation to stop them. The easiest way on VBulletin as a moderator is to enable a Question and Answer verification.

e.g. as part of the registration form there is a question, usually something like

Which one of these is not a swimmer?

Michael Phelps
A Fish
Chocolate

The bots are unable to enter chocolate but most humans are.

Jolly swimmer was able to register for an outlook account and TI account in less than a minute. This will probably be his only post ?????

[woodwards26]

The bots look for forums and can post on thousands a minute and can get past the questions which just make it harder for genuine posters to sign on.
Most forums come from similar sources eg this says Powered by Vbulletin .So secret is not to look like a forum and some of that is just change some of your original set up settings ,names etc so they are different than all the other using VBulletin.

Woody

[Rhoda]

I used to participate on a forum where you needed to pay with a credit card to get a membership - and still there was the odd spammer. Not by bot, admittedly.
It's tedious to keep clicking on that little triangle with the exclamation mark that sits up on the upper right-hand corner of each post, but that's the only way to get them flagged.