SPAM! Lots lately

[Pauline]

In the last few days we’ve had several new users with similar profiles (the “tell me about yourself” section). I suspect spammers. I let their first post go thru but set their membership so all posts go into an approval queue so I can see what they are up to. Today one posted asking about travel insurance for Georgia (the country? the state?) and within minutes another of them posted recommending an insurance company. Both spammers deleted.

It’s a bloody plague and has gotten worse with AI. It’s not enough that Googles AI stops people from going to websites by giving answers taken from those sites, and that people are planning trips with AI apps instead of forums, but now spammers use AI to create profiles and answer questions on forums.

But this forum software has good tools to find spammers so it doesn’t take much time.

 

[NoSpin]

Pauline I'm a mod on a major car forum. New members are automatically prohibited from posting items for sale or promoting sites. The forum is operated by an outside firm so I don't know exactly how the restricitions are implemented, but as a mod I report any irregularity and can also remove posts or suspend users if necessary. Here are our posted restrictions if they are any help to you -

Club Lexus has implemented some reasonable restrictions for members who have been on Club Lexus for less than 30 days and have made less than 30 productive posts. This rule is in place to make Club Lexus a safer sales environment and to reduce spam.

1) Creation of threads in our Classified forums is restricted to our active forum members only. This means members must contribute to the discussion forum for a minimum of 30 days AND 30 posts before they can post any items for sale, for trade or want-to-buy. They can respond to existing threads to ask questions and purchase items from qualified members. This rule is due to a significant increase of zero-history members posting high dollar items for sale without vouches.

Members who have been active readers but are infrequent posters will also meet the classified access criteria to create posts after 6 months membership AND 5 productive posts.

2) Signature capability, visitor messaging capability, URL posting ability, full garage access and limiting (smaller) private message boxes are in place for these members who don't meet the 30 day / 30 post criteria as well. This is due to a massive influx of automated and overseas spammers who abuse these features on a daily basis.

Once members meet both the minimum post-count and time criteria, they will be automatically promoted to the group that can post items for sale and have full access to the other capabilities. If members meet these criteria but have not been active on Club Lexus for some time, they must make a post in the discussion forums before being promoted.

Promotions will happen on an automated basis within two days of meeting the minimum criteria, so please be patient.

 

[Pauline]

Thanks for that. I’m going to give it all some thought.