The Enid Blyton Society

Unfortunately we are having a lot of trouble with spammers trying to register on the forums at present, I have just deleted 33 of them!

I don't know why they have all started crawling out from under their stones in the past couple of weeks, but I must apologise if one or two have accidentally slipped through the net, they are slimy unpleasant creatures and occasionally they slip through.

I must also apologise if I have deleted any genuine Blyton enthusiasts and if this is the case please feel free to email me at tony@enidblytonsociety.co.uk and let me know and we will see if we can register you properly.

I guess this is a problem that all forums have to put up with, but currently we are under siege and it is wasting far too much of my time.

33? What a nuisance these people are. I hope the invasion dies down soon Tony.

They're worse than the spiders!!!

Julie2owlsdene wrote:They're worse than the spiders!!!

I couldn't agree more!

Not what you need to occupy your time, Tony!

'Aurélien Arkadiusz'

Spammers are those who register but donot post any thing do you mean that by spammers or those who hack!

Recommended Web site to assist with this problem: stopforumspam.com. If in doubt about any member, you can check their details in the Stop Forum Spam database. I would advise using an IP address search, as that's usually more successful than e-mail addresses or user names. You can also use Stop Forum Spam to report ones who try to sign up (although that obviously takes a bit more time than just banning or deleting them). They have plugins as well that you can install to automatically ban new spammers (most of whom are bots) who try to sign up. Having used it for another forum where I've been an admin, I can say first-hand just what a very useful site that is.

zaidi wrote:Spammers are those who register but do not post any thing do you mean that by spammers or those who hack!

Most of our spammers come on the forums for no other purpose than to advertise things like holidays, watches and jewellery, designer clothes or films/TV programmes.

Thanks for the details of the website, Rowan.

     Can anyone join the forum, and they are automatically approved immediately? Or do they have to be approved by moderators? (I don't recall whether I was able to join instantly, or had to wait for approval.)
     One thing often done on Yahoo groups is that new members have to be approved by a moderator, and, when they apply to join, they have to say a few words about why they wish to join. This is only 200 characters or so, but I presume it is intended to demonstrate that the applicant (a) is a real human being, not a spam-bot, and (b) has some sort of interest in the topic.
     I can't say I've ever noticed spam on this forum - although there was one new poster whom Nigel referred to as a 13-year-old spammer, although the post didn't strike me as spam. But if it is a problem, could the forum be configured so that new members have to say a few words about why they wish to join - just to verify that they are a human being, and with a real interest in the topic of Enid Blyton?

Regards, Michael.

MJE wrote:     although there was one new poster whom Nigel referred to as a 13-year-old spammer, although the post didn't strike me as spam.

If I remember correctly, the signature contained a URL for a business website.

MJE wrote:     Can anyone join the forum, and they are automatically approved immediately? Or do they have to be approved by moderators?

They have to be approved by Tony (or by me during Tony's rare absences)but often it's not easy to tell if an applicant is a potential spammer, so we're looking into introducing other measures.

Moonraker wrote:If I remember correctly, the signature contained a URL for a business website.

     It must have been edited out - it's not there now. The writer simply said she was 13, in boarding school writing essays for a nursing thesis (at 13?), and found it difficult to be away from her parents.
     I'm not saying the post made a lot of sense (in fact, I didn't quite see the point of it); but it certainly didn't look like spam, and could have been the kind of off-the-cuff chat any of us might write, especially if new to the forum.

Regards, Michael.

Anita Bensoussane wrote:... but often it's not easy to tell if an applicant is a potential spammer, so we're looking into introducing other measures.

     What about the Yahoo groups idea of asking applicants to write a few sentences about why they want to join? Would that be a good measure to introduce? Of course, a spammer may write a couple of sentences referring to their interest in Enid Blyton - but would someone joining only with the intention of spamming bother to do that? It might be a deterrent, at least, and I assume Yahoo groups introduced that idea because it works at least sometimes.
     What other measures are you considering? Is there much you can do about this?

     Recently I went back again for the first time in a few years to a forum dedicated to a British composer I'm interested in (George Lloyd), and I found there were only a few posts, and they were all spam from people trying to flog pharmaceuticals and porn. I was quite shocked - it appeared that the manager (the composer's son) had opened the forum, and a number of people joined but no-one posted anything except for the spammers, and the manager had done nothing about it.
     I wrote to him about it, hoping it would spur him into doing something about it, and he told me that he had closed the forum years back because it had been invaded by spammers - but in fact it was still open (although completely inactive). I left a legitimate message there, but other than that it is totally inactive.
     I got the feeling the manager didn't really know what to do about it - he could have deleted the spam and booted out the offending members. But what I am sure of is that the forum will never thrive as long as there are no messages there except for spam which is allowed to remain. (It's still there, even though I informed the manager about it.)
     One of the saddest things I've seen on the Internet for a long time. I'm sure the manager could have done more if he knew what to do. You don't have to be quite *that* helpless in the face of spam attacks.

Regards, Michael.

Yesterday I had 658 new messages in 5 minutes.

I've never been so popular...

Viv

What? Do you mean all spam? Crikey, you need some anti-spam software.