Removal of Spam threads.

personally the mods are doing a good job on spam

there really is not that much that gets through
now last night was odd , with so much

but today it is gone

Happy Friday.

The attacks seem to have started again.

Yes it is in right now.

"Here comes another one ..."
"Here it comes again ..."
"Here comes a bunch of 'em ..."

Python has a quote for EVERY situation!

Friday evening MST, wall of spam, multiple forums... gonna be a long weekend...

Originally Posted by astrogeek Friday evening MST, wall of spam, multiple forums... gonna be a long weekend...

Hi...

I thought most, if not all, first time threads had to be cleared by a moderator first, before even they're allowed to be posted on the forum. If that's the case, why are so many of these SPAM threads getting through?

EDIT: Wow, there's a little over 3 pages of SPAM listed on "Zero Reply Threads" as of 6:55 PST.

Regards...

I opened a text browser (w3m) and did a search for the english text string that appears in most of the spams.

The results returned a list of a bunch of forums, so I don't think this is targeted to LQ. I must confess, though, I was lazy and followed only a few of the links in the search results.

Originally Posted by astrogeek Friday evening MST, wall of spam, multiple forums... gonna be a long weekend...

Posts from two members got through the new filters, and it's already cleaned up. The spam that is getting through now is roughly .001% of the attempts, and we'll continue to improve the filters.

--jeremy

Originally Posted by ardvark71 Hi... I thought most, if not all, first time threads had to be cleared by a moderator first, before even they're allowed to be posted on the forum. If that's the case, why are so many of these SPAM threads getting through?

The first post made by a new member is evaluated by a variety of heuristics and based on that can be placed in a moderation queue. We err on the side of letting spam through vs blocking legitimate posts, as we want to help new members as quickly as possible. As mentioned, I think the amount of spam we block out of hand would astound most members. The amount of false positives is also very small. It's a balancing act and an area we continually tweak and improve.

--jeremy

Originally Posted by jeremy As mentioned, I think the amount of spam we block out of hand would astound most members.

I have absolutely no doubts about that. My thanks to you and the moderators for keeping tabs on this.

Regards...

Originally Posted by jeremy Posts from two members got through the new filters, and it's already cleaned up. The spam that is getting through now is roughly .001% of the attempts, and we'll continue to improve the filters. --jeremy

Thanks for the reply, it is reassuring. And my sympathies.

I know that what we see is only a very small part of the attempts. And I recognize that you and the LQ mods and admins do a remarkable job of keeping as much out as you do.

But when I sit down for an LQ session and see the wall of spam it makes me so angry I could... well, all the cats leave the room! And the problem is now so large and persistent globally that I very nearly despair...

As I type this I see another round has now started, so I'll let you get back to it.

I have done a little investigation on this using w3m, links, and lynx.

If you go to the website specified in the spam, it redirects to another website which appears to be some kind of link farm--it's just a listing of links with some text next to them, at least in a text browser. You can see a screenshot here.

As I don't have Korean installed on my machine and couldn't read it if I did, I get lots of asterisks in the display. If anyone is interested in the whois, I'll be happy to post it, but I doubt it's worth the effort.

I have been doing a little investigation as well, every little bit helps I suppose.

I have loosely profiled the spam users, at least the ones I have been aware of, for the past couple of weeks.

There was an important difference tonight from the past couple of weeks in that the posting rate (posts per user per hour) was similar, but the maximum number of posts per spam user was fixed at a much lower level. Either the spammers were profiling and stopped at a fixed number, or there is some new limit in place which cut them off - I hope it was the latter. If so, it is still high enough to allow much more room for downward adjustment before affecting legitimate users I think.

The lower number of posts per user greatly reduced length of time and overall visibility of the spam quite a bit from the previous week. I hope that trend continues, whatever the source!

looks like it is starting again. I noticed a strange message at the top of the "new posts" list

Wall of SPAM, Tuesday evening...

*** Update to the Update
First post was at 9:30PM.
It is now about 2:30AM and there has been no letup.
So as of now, 5-1/2 hours and counting few "customers" have been served.

Eight pages deep in the Newbie forum to get past the spam...

This one appears more aggressive than previous instances, with greater number of user names and faster delivery rate per user too. Most are staying below 50 posts per user, but some are now above 160 posts, likely 200+ but I am too tired to track them any more tonight.

My sympathies to the admins who I am sure are dealing with it all.