Spam comments GRRRRRRRR

[panyasan]

It looks like all the stories on the front page up to the story Just Plane crazy by Kotik have had a visit from a spammer who left ads in the form of a comment. That's seems a bit unfair to all the people who worked so hard for their stories and eagerly waiting for a nice comment of a reader.
Can something be done about this by the TRIS techs? (Removing the spam in the comment section for example....)

Secondly, I find it odd that captcha is refusing my captcha code when I try to comment, while the spammer seems to have no problem at all! But I told you, captcha and me aren't friends.

[Distracted]

There are hundreds of spam comments in the archives, panyasan. It's just not efficient use of our time to remove them all. But at least this one is just for watches and not for sexual performance enhancers.

[Cogito]

The reason for putting the spam comments in is not to advertise their junk to us, it's to get their web sites higher in search rankings. In effect, Triaxian Silk is being used to endorse their web site.

I hate spammers.

Grrr!

[panyasan]

Sorry about this! My comment was about the stories on the front page, the first page visitors and lurkers see and read.

I haven't come across much spam in Archive, except one time when the spam comments were longer than the whole poem they were commenting on.
So this new spam attack caught my attention. I didn't know TRIS doesn't do anything about spammers, otherwise I wouldn't have brought this up!

[Kotik]

Yeah, Eireanns comment page has been spammed with french gibberish last night. I know it's a pain in the arse to peel them out of the database, but if we don't do it, they'll continue. Since they couldn't be stopped by the captcha thingy, it is obvious that they've been added manually by a human. Must be the world's most persistent or desperate spammer to put up with the pain in the backside that is leaving a comment in the first place (ridiculously hard-to-read captcha).

The only real solution to it would be finally plugging the comments into the forum authorization and only allowing comments after a forum mod has enabled the account to do so.

I'm calling the cavallery ...

[Distracted]

I'll have some time this weekend. I'll see what I can do about removing the comments. The other stuff's above my pay grade, but I'll notify the tech guy.

Addendum: Tech is aware. I'm not sure what he can do about it, though, other than to make the captcha harder. Unfortunately, we're already getting gripes about the codes being too difficult, and it likely won't help to make the captcha harder if the spam is being posted by a real person and not by a program. Story comments currently aren't linked to the board, so routing them all for approval by the board moderator (namely, me) is not possible with the current system. Even if we could figure out a way to notify me that a comment was pending my approval without restructuring the entire site, any prior approval system relying on an action from me would likely slow things down quite a bit, since I'm only online for a short time a couple of times each day. If we had a moderator who could stay online all day it might be different, but I'm fresh out of volunteers.

On a brighter note, I'm pretty sure that all the spam has now been removed from the main page. Please let me know if we missed any.

[panyasan]

Thanks Distracted, I really appriciate your efforts, especially because you're so busy and pratically running this site on your own. for you.

And also thank you for giving me the heads up about my e-mail account being hacked!

I just came back from a weekend out of town and appartently, someone thought it was funny to hack into my e-mail account of panyasan and sent all kind of messages to people in my adress book.

So if you have received a message from panyasan with a strange link, don't click on the link!! (And if you have sent me a message between Friday 6th, July and Monday, 9th July, please send it again).

[putaro]

If we had a moderator who could stay online all day it might be different, but I'm fresh out of volunteers.

Well, I work at my computer so I'm online quite often and need to check my email. My schedule is pretty weird being on Japan Time but if someone else is online we could probably do it. So, you can put me down as a volunteer.

If we can get notifications with the comments in them it might make sense to just let the comments go in without moderation and then go in and whack any spam and turn on moderation when some spammer starts to go nuts.

[panyasan]

Hi,

Question: I have changed my e-mail adress after my previous account got hacked. Now I wonder if I change my e-mail adress in my User Control Panel, would any one see this (besides the admins)?

[Kotik]

Even if we could figure out a way to notify me that a comment was pending my approval without restructuring the entire site, any prior approval system relying on an action from me would likely slow things down quite a bit, since I'm only online for a short time a couple of times each day. If we had a moderator who could stay online all day it might be different, but I'm fresh out of volunteers.

Well, I'm online most of the day. But mind you, that is most of the day in Central Europe, so when I get up and go online, most of you have probably just gone to bed , except for putaro, who's having lunch

[Weeble]

it appears the spammers are backkkkk

[Distracted]

I think I took care of it. Thanks for the heads up, guys.

[Kotik]

I think I took care of it. Thanks for the heads up, guys.

Not quite, yet. They spammed the General Talk section, too.

[Distracted]

I'm on it.

[putaro]

Thanks Dis!