Invasion

[Mark J]

Today the forum has been inundated with inappropriate sp am posts, no doubt computer generated.  I have personally reported 13 posts just from the "General" sub forum.   It takes 7 clicks to report a spa m post.  After 13 reports I'm a little worn out, only to find more of this poop in nearly every other sub-forum.

I wish there was some way to use AI to get rid of these things as soon as they are posted, but I don't know much about that. 

But is there any way we could streamline the reporting process?  Most of these "poop posts" are obvious from their titles.  You don't need to open them.  Can any of the "clicks" be eliminated?

 

[fcschoenthal]

I did the same thing, then got tired of the futility.

Can't imagine how much of a headache they are for the moderators.

[Von]

Yeah, I'm working my way through them... be useful to hear from the mods how useful the reporting is in a case like this (and thank you to them for their work).

[Von]

The Events (which I didn't even know we had) are the bigger PITA since one has to scroll to the end to report them.

[Von]

Looks like a mod stepped in and deleted them all as I was going through them.

[Chet]

Thanks to all of you for your due diligence.  I think it was somewhere between 80 and 100 spam posts.  That takes quite a while to deal with.  Each time one of you fine members reports a concerning post the Mods get an email notification.  I had 390 such notifications.  Keep up the good work!

[pkinneb]

On 2/12/2025 at 4:58 PM, Chet said:

Thanks to all of you for your due diligence.  I think it was somewhere between 80 and 100 spam posts.  That takes quite a while to deal with.  Each time one of you fine members reports a concerning post the Mods get an email notification.  I had 390 such notifications.  Keep up the good work!

Whoa!! Thank you and all the moderators for all your hard work keeping the forum rolling!! Much appreciated!

[drzaius]

20 minutes ago, Chet said:

Thanks to all of you for your due diligence.  I think it was somewhere between 80 and 100 spam posts.  That takes quite a while to deal with.  Each time one of you fine members reports a concerning post the Mods get an email notification.  I had 390 such notifications.  Keep up the good work!

Appreciate your efforts. It was like whack-a-mole for a while this morning.

[Mark J]

37 minutes ago, Chet said:

Thanks to all of you for your due diligence.  I think it was somewhere between 80 and 100 spam posts.  That takes quite a while to deal with.  Each time one of you fine members reports a concerning post the Mods get an email notification.  I had 390 such notifications.  Keep up the good work!

Chet, do you need us to report every one of these spam posts (and hence you get hundreds of emails), or is it enough to call attention to a problem if we each were to call it a day after reporting several?

[wtnhighlander]

Thanks to Chet for taking care of these! I can say that when a few of you report a spam post, it accumulates points against the poster, and will automatically invoke a moderation requirement, so they can't post more without assistance.

Unfortunately, the scripted posts tend to generate a new account every few posts, skirting around the moderation requirement.

[Mark J]

They're back.  

[Tpt life]

I thought that for a bit, two member reports would embargo the account. Thus, I spend my early mornings reporting the spam. It seems that function might not be working, if anyone else is doing likewise. 

[fcschoenthal]

On 2/13/2025 at 8:50 AM, Tpt life said:

I thought that for a bit, two member reports would embargo the account. Thus, I spend my early mornings reporting the spam. It seems that function might not be working, if anyone else is doing likewise. 

Unfortunately, like @wtnhighlander said earlier, the scripted bots strike quickly and then come back with another user name, never to return to the first. I see the only thing we can do is flag one (to notify the moderators there's a problem) and try to weed through the rest to get to content. They'll take care of deleting.

[Von]

I'm noticing some of the accounts are apparently getting dozens of posts made before we get them blocked. I can't think of any legitimate reason for a new member (really any member) to post that many posts that quickly.

[fcschoenthal]

Surprised to see that one of the spammers (rajajichakghat) is showing up right now in the Who's Online members list.

[legenddc]

On 2/13/2025 at 10:40 AM, Von said:

I'm noticing some of the accounts are apparently getting dozens of posts made before we get them blocked. I can't think of any legitimate reason for a new member (really any member) to post that many posts that quickly.

I was thinking the same thing. Can we limit how many posts a new user can make in 15 minutes?

[h3nry]

On 2/13/2025 at 9:19 AM, legenddc said:

I was thinking the same thing. Can we limit how many posts a new user can make in 15 minutes?

The trouble with that is a robot can make a lot of posts in 15 minutes ... so whatever limit is set as reasonable for real people, that's how many posts we'll see from each robot ... so there would still be quite a lot of mess.

Perhaps a better method would be to require every new user to have their first post moderated ... The question then is does that add more work for the moderators vetting real users, rather than cleaning up an attack like this ... but we'd still get the robots using AI to fake a woodwork interest.

[Beechwood Chip]

On 2/13/2025 at 9:50 AM, Tpt life said:

I thought that for a bit, two member reports would embargo the account. Thus, I spend my early mornings reporting the spam. It seems that function might not be working, if anyone else is doing likewise. 

Does it matter if we flag as "spammer", or if we save a few clicks by taking the default, "not spam, but I want to tell the moderator"?

[thewoodwhisperer]

The trick with this is that we can only do so much to discourage this behavior. When a spammer comes in, their account is in the New Member group. This group has restricted permissions but they can still post. In fact, posting is the action that eventually leads them to become a regular Member with full permissions. So consider a regular human participant. They need to participate 5 times before they get full access. Of course, this blocks many spammers but not all as they can easily put up 5 innocuous comments into the archive and then permissions will open up. So the only way to really stop this is to completely stop new members from joining. In the past when we had a flood of spam, we did that very thing. I turned off new registrations for a few weeks and that curtailed the activity. I can certainly do that again if this continues to be a major issue. 

 

[drzaius]

I see this as an attack, not an attempt to actually drive traffic to Temu. These spam messages are so bad that I can't see anyone, no matter how clueless, responding to them

[fcschoenthal]

On 2/13/2025 at 11:53 AM, drzaius said:

I see this as an attack, not an attempt to actually drive traffic to Temu.

Agreed. There are too many posts from too many users and they keep creating new ones.

When this is over, I'd like to hear how many spam messages were actually posted and from how many different users.

[h3nry]

On 2/13/2025 at 10:53 AM, drzaius said:

I see this as an attack, not an attempt to actually drive traffic to Temu. These spam messages are so bad that I can't see anyone, no matter how clueless, responding to them

It always amazes me how much cluelessness is out there ... they're only targetting the very tail end of the bell curve ... do not unerestimate how out of touch the most cluesless 0.01% are.

They know the posts are being deleted, so they keep sending more to make sure that one remains "live".

I read one of the posts just to see what they might be doing ... and they seem to be trying to get you to use a Temu "coupon code". My guess is that there is a vulnerability with these codes such that if you try to use someone elses code, your credit card details get forwarded to them. Temu will likely fix it in a few days, and the deluge will be over until the next scam makes the rounds

At least I'm hoping it will go away on it's own, and that "Big Woodwork" isn't trying to drive us amateurs out of the craft.

[Chet]

On 2/13/2025 at 10:48 AM, fcschoenthal said:

When this is over, I'd like to hear how many spam messages were actually posted and from how many different users.

I couldn't tell you how many different users because that would really slowdown the process of getting rid of them but between yesterday and just this morning we are north of 200 spam messages.

[Von]

I went back to see what the sign-in process is. I'm surprised they are able to both script both the Google reCAPTCHA and the workworking question.

Googling for posting limits for the Invision Community platform isn't turning up anything obvious helpful.

Annoying situation. Thank you to the mods for your hard work.

 

[fcschoenthal]

On 2/13/2025 at 1:04 PM, Chet said:

I couldn't tell you how many different users because that would really slowdown the process of getting rid of them but between yesterday and just this morning we are north of 200 spam messages.

I feel your pain. You've got to wonder what they are hoping to gain.

Last year I had one of my email accounts attacked and got over 1500 spam emails. Only about 300 were caught by the filter. Turns out that within the barrage were emails showing activity on my Amazon account adding funds to a gift card and then buying a couple of things (a lot more than they put in). Luckily, I monitor charges pretty close and Amazon reversed the charges.