Spammers

[Karen]

Looks like we have lots of spam in the discussion board!

[Jan]

Jan SMASH!

That's the fun part of this job! I can ban a spammer in less than a dozen keystrokes and deleting their threads only takes 6 clicks. Bwaaahahaha!!!

Jan

[Karen]

I enjoy seeing your dark side. It's fun!

[Spoo Junky]

That one that was up the other day.... very enlightening! :P

[Chipmunk]

Jan SMASH!

That's the fun part of this job! I can ban a spammer in less than a dozen keystrokes and deleting their threads only takes 6 clicks. Bwaaahahaha!!!

Jan

When I first read this (during my weekly Lurk), I really did LOL, and had a mental image of you intoning "be somewhere... else" as you pounded the last key.

Thanks - I had had a rough week, and needed a Happy Moment.


I'm also posting because apparently it's been a long time since I last logged in, and there were two spam PMs in my box, but no means to report them.

Perhaps I'm BIMing, and missed something obvious. One was from a guest account, one from an apparently still active account.

Feel free to access my PMs to see what I mean (there's only spam there), but please leave the corpses, because I'm an anti-spam researcher, and the data is interesting. Yes, I too very much enjoy that form of killing.

The active account concerns me, because there's a current forum spammer Pattern of creating an account, and trickle spamming thru it. Another nifty trick is to make a "me-too" zero-content post, then return a few days/weeks later and change it to a spam link (crafty vermin).


One more little spam thing...
For a moment, I thought I didn't have my password on this computer, and went to the lost password thingie, which asked me the "Random Question":

What color is the sky on a nice day?

And the B5 part of my brain was disappointed that it wasn't a B5 quote.
Wouldn't that be a better hoop to jump thru? and more fun?

Then the Geek/pedantic part of my brain was bothered about the inherent assumption in that question. There are some people (including me & any night owls) who have different tastes in "nice" days than the majority.

Are those "Random Question"s from a standard vB pool?
If so, a custom, forum-related pool would be more secure... and more fun.

Yeah, kind of a nit-pick, but I'm in that mode.


Ok, one final, REALLY IMPORTANT thing:

Does anyone know the Klingon or Narn or Minbari for "Today is a good day to kill spam"?
Come on, somebody here must have a smattering of at least one of those languages.

[Dan Dassow]

English: Today is a good day to kill spam.
Klingon: DaHjaj 'oH QaQ jaj Daq HoH [spam]

English: Today is a good day to kill my enemy.
Klingon: DaHjaj 'oH QaQ jaj Daq HoH wIj jagh

Source: http://sites.google.com/a/klingonwor...and-dictionary

[Chipmunk]

Did the report-as-spam thingie disappear, or maybe it never existed?

Jan/et-al are usually blinding fast with the ban hammer, but I just noticed some fresh SPAM, at an unusual hour (they usually post in the wee hours).
If there's a "page a hammer wielder" button, they'll disappear faster.
Hmmm... maybe it could be called "Thor"?

To quote Firefly:
"Just collatin' data, as they say."

English: Today is a good day to kill spam.
Klingon: DaHjaj 'oH QaQ jaj Daq HoH [spam]

English: Today is a good day to kill my enemy.
Klingon: DaHjaj 'oH QaQ jaj Daq HoH wIj jagh

Source: http://sites.google.com/a/klingonwor...and-dictionary

Thanks a ton Dan!
I'd seen that site, but I surf with high security settings, so it doesn't work for me.
I'll be using that quote in an upcoming FAQ for my anti-spam Team.

[Jan]

All gone now! It's been a busy morning at work so I wasn't able to pop in as often as I usually do.

Since DougO and I are pretty much the only staff, I don't think there's any way to make the spam disappear any faster than it does, sorry. You're welcome to PM me but I always delete spam before opening any PMs anyway.

Thanks,
Jan

[Chipmunk]

All gone now! It's been a busy morning at work so I wasn't able to pop in as often as I usually do.

Since DougO and I are pretty much the only staff, I don't think there's any way to make the spam disappear any faster than it does, sorry. You're welcome to PM me but I always delete spam before opening any PMs anyway.

Thanks for explaining your work cyle, Jan!

Ok, I just won't worry about them.
You always nail them all, and it's kind of nice (for me) to have the chance to save a copy for my research. I'm focused on email spam now, but forum spam is next on my list - I really need to write a low impact bot to harvest spam from the forums I do lurk at, so I can build a larger corpus for the future.

[Wyrmling]

I must say I am amazed at how every morning it seems to be new members listed and logged in that I can only assume are spamming accounts. Is there a way to up the anti-spam measures in the registration process? Unless you really just like stomping all the spammers which I can understand as well.

[Jan]

You're right that the majority are spammers, mostly by putting spammy links in sig. lines but never posting. As I see them registering, I ban them - probably around a thousand per month. Most of them never post but there are always a few who do and I get rid of them as soon as possible, too.

DougO also goes through periodically and deletes other ones that I may have missed.

But yeah...gotta admit that to an extent it's fun to JAN SMASH the spammers.

Jan

[OmahaStar]

around a thousand per month.

That's just ridiculous! When do you have time to post? Or sleep?