How do you request moderator get ride of the Xrated garbage

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GloriaCR
Posts: 250
Joined: 2007-01-07 19:32:44

How do you request moderator get ride of the Xrated garbage

Post by GloriaCR »

How do you request moderator get ride of the Xrated garbage
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Steve S
Posts: 1600
Joined: 2005-09-30 23:08:35

Post by Steve S »

I deleted this posting as soon as I saw it. A friend also called me about this and told me.
We as monitors are not on the forums all the time. I usually check the boards several times a day on weekends and during the week first thing in the morning and after work.
You can simply click on the name of a monitor that is listed for each forum or contact our Webmaster. We all work so we do not have someone here all the time. These spammers post these by automatic means and usually key ion to a word or short phrase to find a board to Spam. This is all too common for every forum and not just ours.
For any of our posters who have problems or see any inappropriate Spam like this simply contact one of our monitors and we will respond pretty quickly.We are ever vigilant and strive to make this a safe place to come and get help and information.
Steve
Steve
Ileostomy in 1990 for UC.
The mind wobbles.......
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Terry G (UK)
Posts: 5864
Joined: 2005-10-01 01:11:56

Post by Terry G (UK) »

Dear Steve,

I sympathise! I moderate the Incontact Forum and we had the hard choice to make registration compulsory. (By its nature, people with continence problems had wished to remain anonymous) We were forced into this by Italian automated spam which would 'hit' us with 150 or more posts, actually added onto other posts, making it difficult to clear up. I spent several periods of upwards of two hours at a time 'housekeeping' to remove it all. In the end, we had to resort to registration, albeit reluctantly. These spammers are a darned nuisance!

Keep up the good work (as I know you will!)

BW

Terry
Was always willing to offer help - "Expert Patient"!
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baglady
Posts: 2474
Joined: 2005-10-01 07:13:51

Post by baglady »

I have seen some pretty bad things here but I have also seen they are removed quickly. I am proud to belong to a group where the moderators take such good care of the boards.

I would like to personally Thank all of the moderators for doing such a wonderful job.

KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK !!!!!!!

Baglady
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Bob Webtech
Site Admin
Posts: 995
Joined: 2005-09-29 11:17:09

Post by Bob Webtech »

We're using all the features available in our discussion board software to keep spammers off the board: we require registration in order to post, we require "visual confirmation" when registering (the graphical "confirmation code" that the user must type), we religiously update this software to the latest version whenever a new release appears, and since last August, we've been requiring email account activation (i.e., when somebody registers, our software sends them an automatic email, to which the user must respond in order to complete the registration).

Unfortunately, the spammers have been getting ever more sophisticated and have developed automated software (spamming 'bots') that overcome these defenses. They do automated registrations by "reading" the confirmation codes using OCR (optical character recognition). And although the email activation step initially thwarted most spammers (because they were reluctant to provide valid email addresses), now they're creating huge numbers of throw-away email addresses that they use for quickly registering and posting (these email addresses probably don't remain valid very long afterward).

Sometime soon, the next major (3.0) version of the software we're using (phpBB) will be released. I expect it to have better spam resistance, mainly by producing improved visual confirmation images that are more difficult for the bots to read using OCR.

As you can see, this is a never ending battle. Meanwhile, all we can do is delete the junk as soon as it appears.
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