New spammer has appeared

[handibunny]

Don't know whom to contact, but I just discovered a piece of spam, under the user name rohmannmonr on my sticky thread about making swags with plywood.

Is there a place to report stuff like this? Hate having anyone mess with our great forum!

[wood-n-things]

Thank you. In the future either send myself or one of the other mods or BobD a PM with the user name exact spelling please....and we will take care of it.

I found this one and 6 others in that same thread and they have all been dealt with. Some had 28 posts throughout the system. This is an everyday occurrence.

Thanks again for pointing this one out.

[Sally]

I had no idea there was so much spamming. I saw it once so I didn't think too much about it but 28 posts - 6 others. Gad that's a lot of time getting rid of the stuff. Thank you Mike and everyone keeping our forum "clean".

[BobD (Archive)]

And I just took care of another...

[martzy]

What do they do? What's the purpose? How do you identify them?

[wood-n-things]

Well,
they attempt to sell their products on here usually. Others are more scurrilous with hidden agendas like viruses hidden within links in their posts. Some of the time the spam blockers in the site catch them but not all of them. So we mods are constantly looking for them but none of us can be logged on 24/7 and after all we are volunteers. We also watch the different threads for intruders and to try and keep the forum a mild and friendly atmosphere all can enjoy. Once in a while we have to ruffle some feathers, but everything we do we attempt to do it for the good of the entire membership at large. I of course speak for myself.

[martzy]

Well then you are doing a bang up job because I don't think I have ever encountered on before. Keep up the good work. I'll make a small donation to your cause. Let's say, double what you are getting paid and add 20 percent.

[J Michael]

We had problems like this on a cooking forum I used to be a moderator on. There were several attacks by a few groups that we were able to track down - some were just bored kids playing around in the computer lab in school just looking for some mischief to get into, a couple more were a little more organized and had websites where someone would post a "target" forum and then the gang would start joining up to ask really dumb (totally off topic or unrelated to the purpose of the forum) questions, try to start arguments, see how gullible the forum members would be and how much time they could get them to waste answering their questions, or to see how x-rated a name they could get by with - then they would sit back and laugh about their accomplishments, which is how we finally tracked them down.

It's strange how some people can't seem to find anything constructive to do with their time.

[JimSawyer]

In over 4 years, I've only seen one spammer. And that was in the middle of the night. It was gone pretty quick.
So I guess we're in good hands.
Big Thanks to our mods...

...And Mike, the stuff you bring to the site all of the time is amazing. I wonder if you ever sleep sometimes, AND you're chasing spammers...Wow...!!!!

[ubgoofy2003]

I thank you Mike & all the Mod's too. You must spend a lot of your time root'n these things out. You do a great job & I thank you for it. Take Care

[wood-n-things]

Keith thanks for the pay raise. That is most generous. I just encountered another one that slipped by he had 86 posts. No more....Swat!

Jim,
Thanks for the compliment. It is truly appreciated.

[handibunny]

Let me add my thanks to Mike, BobD and all the mods who take such good care of this site.

I also appreciate the care taken to achieve that balance between removing material that is truly offensive, while allowing exchanges of ideas and information that may occasionally create some hurt feelings or that some may find objectionable.

I know that this doesn't happen all by itself, and I think the rest of us "civilians" need to take responsibility to report anything that seems "off" so it can be taken care of as needed.

Thanks again for your good work!

[BobD (Archive)]

I've found that you can hire companies in India, Pakistan, and Indonesia to join and post up to 10,000 advertisements on forums. The companies charge about $100 U.S. for the service.

What makes those spammers difficult is since they are live people, the countermeasures we use to stop automatic user creation (bots) don't stop them. We literally have to watch and ban those people. On the Woodcarving Illustrated site, I can ban entire IP addresses and e-mail addresses, but I don't have the permissions to do that on this site.

Bob

[handibunny]

Bob,

If it would help to have the option to ban entire IP and email addresses from this site, is there any way you can get permission? Is there anything the membership of this site can do to help you get that permission, or to assist in your efforts? I know we are all concerned about this, and would like to help if we can. Thanks.

[BobD (Archive)]

Hi Carole,
It's a software thing. When we set up the boards, I was given different admin permissions on each site (not sure why). We're trying to figure out how to get me the same permissions on all three sites, but the software is pretty dense on the back end (good functionality on the open forum translates into a very complicated back end.

Honestly, this site has substantially fewer spammers than the WcI site. They're banning upwards of 200 a day over there, so it's not quite as high a priority. We're trying to get all of the forums upgraded to the newest version (which would help me get all the admin rights I need), but that version doesn't play nicely with the custom code we have on the rest of the site... we're considering several changes to the websites to make it easier for me to update...it's all ongoing...

Bob