spammers?

[cheval]

I saw the closed thread and I was curious how do you guys determine if someone is a spammer? Is it bringing up old threads?

It seems like when you look at the Who's Online there's always a ton of people 'registering' - are those spammers you are talking about?

[WashingtonBay]

I saw the closed thread and I was curious how do you guys determine if someone is a spammer? Is it bringing up old threads?

Sometimes... This particular guy had an IP from India. We'd previously put him on a watch list, but waited for him to post something to actually ban him. Yes, the post was benign, but he was probably checking for moderation and filters on new posters (which we have used and sometimes still use) and if his posts stay, he'd probably come back and post more, or edit the existing posts to add links for whatever he's selling.

Hopefully, if we ever get a real, legitimate poster from India or Nigeria or the Phillipines, or any of the other hotbeds of spam, they'll post and introduce themselves as such. If they sign up and just start saying "hi evryone.. nice pony" they're going to get banned.

It seems like when you look at the Who's Online there's always a ton of people 'registering' - are those spammers you are talking about?Sometimes they are, sometimes they're search engine bots that click links within the page until they hit error screens. We have a filter that hubby has used in the past (not sure if it's turned on now or not) that checks registering IPs against a database of IPs that other forums have reported as spammers and blocks those.

[cheval]

That's crazy - sort of like getting all the crap in email.

I've seen this happening on a couple of other forums recently.

[WashingtonBay]

I was editing and clarifying while you were replying, btw.

It can be a little nutty, and if you go to forums where they don't filter in any way, they literally are overrun with posts selling everything from shoes to porn.

The filters we use catch most of those. There are days where there are literally a dozen new 'members' who are really spammers.


The line that's sometimes harder to draw are people who are selling something, but it's horse related. Sometimes, we might let those stay. It depends some on whether they stick around to talk about the product, or just hit and run.