Spammers Drive Me Nuts

[gee4]

Chikky,
You were the one that started this topic saying how much time you were wasting clearing out your boss's spam, now you are saying "it is a fact of life in the internet age."  Understanding your frustration, I was merely pointing out how much this site is being targeted lately and in doing so, agreeing with you.  This never happened previously before the site was updated last year.

Cathy S,
Can you add the same authentication to Blogs as you have done for Groups?  Why is it only one section that is being targeted?

[Cathy S]

Susan has already indicated that she will look into authentication for the blogs as well as groups. 

As to your second question Gee, it isn't just the blogs that get targeted.  There are other areas that have been spammed but Susan is very diligent at keeping the site tidy.  It is a question of finding a balance between inconvenience to members having to authenticate every entry and the time it takes to tidy up the spam left by the bots in the first place.

It is not unique to this site, any site that allows member contribution can be open to spambots and it is nothing to do with the system architecture of the site now compared to the previous version - it is because the spam bots are becoming increasingly sophisticated at finding ways past the protections.  Spam attacks on e-mail inboxes, which is what Chikky started this thread about, are somewhat different and there are good filters that keep it at bay.

By the way, it is very easy to get drawn into spamming - how many people have forwarded one of those e-mails saying "WARNING  don't open the e-mail called blah blah with an attachment called XYZ it contains the most vicious known virus" - the majority of those are hoax virus warnings intended to create high volumes of internet traffic and slow systems down ... it is a form of spam because it is totally unnecessary.   If you receive one of these it takes less than a minute to run a check on a search engine that will confirm it is a known hoax and you can delete that bit of spam instead of growing it!

[gee4]

Cathy,

Before the site was revamped last year, there was no Blog or Group section, so we wouldn't have see any spam.  It seems to be quite visible now in the newly created sections.

[gee4]

I'm going to request again that we get rid of the Blog Section on DD.

This morning there is a full page of rubbish, and unless you scroll through the next pages, you would never know if anyone has posted anything worth reading.  It looks awful.

To Susan and the Moderators...

With the increase of spam on this site on a daily basis, perhaps the BLOG section is not a good idea anymore, as this is the area spammers seem to target.

Can I make a suggestion to get rid of the BLOG section and see if that makes a difference?

[susan silva]

We will not take down the blogs, even with the spam it is a highly visited section.  We will just keep looking for other solutions. 

[JessW]

Susan

I don't think I have visited the blog section, however I have noticed that since its inception I receive more and more junk emails from the likes of South West travel with a link to my non-existent travel itinerary/hotel voucher etc (and those are some of the least offensive ones!).  I have tried blocking them, however more and more come each day and it takes me a good half an hour each week to troll through them to siphon off the genuine emails!

Coincidence?  I think not.

Jess (not too impressed with junk mail which is why I dropped Hotmail years ago because I have not now nor ever wanted viagra or a penis extension!)

[Cozwaz]

Are you receiving this junk mail into your DD email inbox?  If so I am jealous as I don't get any 

The thing with Blogs is that they are great from an SEO point of view  - just a shame if they are generating spam.

[gee4]

Jess,

You should read the Blog section.  Myself and others have posted some useful information as well as tips n tricks on features of MS Office.

My concern is, the more this area is targetted, the more the other postings will be lost.  No one wants to trawl through pages of spam to find the most recent postings if they are looking for something in particular.

[JessW]

Gee

Thanks for that, however I am talking about my dd email address that my friends have no knowledge of due to the amount of junk mail I cannot get rid of (and not a Office email or any of my other email addresses) and which is being targetted from the US bit time, and yes I have tried blocking them etc!

(phew - try saying that in one breath - almost fell off my chair trying!)

Jess!

[gee4]

Hey Jess,

I didn't mean read the Blogs in relation to blocking emails, I just meant you should read them in general. 

[susan silva]

You  should check out the blogs, we have some good information on them.  As for the spammers they do drive me crazy, I think it is like a game to them.  They MUST see I delete them as soon as I can, so why post?  Go to am old board where they don't care and don't take them down! I have something new I will be trying so hopefully that works in blocking spam!  Implementing the captcha code was a good idea, it just seems someone is manually putting them in.

(ooops edited!  bloggers don't drive me crazy ahahha they are awesome!)

[gee4]

I report Spam on this site on a daily basis.  Can we get it removed?

I seem to be the only one that notices it or monitors the webpages on which it appears.

Advertising is bad enough but the spam is even worse.