spammers - can linking be disabled?

S

swarfrat

Guest
Can linking be disabled for new posters? That seems like a feature of some boards and would cut down on the appeal of the forums as easy spam. The fact that they're loading images means you hit their site, and now have images on your computer. It's not hard to imagine how this could result in serious legal trouble for completely innocent folks.
 
I third this notion, and offer the return to the minimum time of membership before posting option that existed long ago.
 
swarfrat said:
Can linking be disabled for new posters? That seems like a feature of some boards and would cut down on the appeal of the forums as easy spam.
Click to expand...

If there's a way to do it, I can't find it. Perhaps Aaron knows of a way.
 
That's unfortunate. I did a little looking around and found some links but the fact that the SMF mods exist implies the base software doesnt do this well.

https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Spam_-_my_forum_is_flooded_with_spam,_what_can_I_do

The Bad Behavior Mod is the one most directly connected to link spam.
 
It seems there's a performance hit for using that mod (it's not currently installed; I checked that), but they also imply that it's nominal and only affects high-traffic sites, which this one probably doesn't qualify as.

Installing mods isn't something I'm prepared to do at this point - if I break the board I don't have any way to recover it. So, I'll let Aaron decide on that move.
 
I will support the idea, as well. There sure have been a lot of them recently.
 
Yep, we've been chagrined at the volume of SPAM lately, and have talked about how to handle it. Right now we're looking at ways to simply block Russia.
 
Tell me about it. Although, as far as administrating/moderating a forum goes, if spam is worst thing I see, I'm fairly happy. This is a very well-behaved forum. I moderated a slightly larger tech forum for a while and it was like herding cats. You'd think a bunch of people with enough on the ball to be computer programmers/engineers/techs would be fairly well-behaved, but you'd be wrong. High-end nerds tend to have the social skills of honey badgers, so you're constantly arbitrating fights like you're in some inner-city kindergarten schoolyard :laughing7:
 
Hmmm....we were just asking ourselves what the point of all this SPAM could be; what the profit or motivation was......and just had a wild thought:


Massive Russian SPAM leading up to election day. Could it be the Russians are hiding what they are really up to within a blizzard of meaningless chatter?


Will all the Russian SPAM end tomorrow?


Is UW just a sacrificial pawn in a much larger game?


tenor.gif
 
I'm not sure it's the Russians. Run a tracert on some of those IP addresses, and you'll find the origin is... OUTER MONGOLIA! Those guys are the worst. Sex is against the law there and the 'net is heavily censored, so they have a lot of pent-up energy desperately seeking release. I'm not making this up. It's where that age-old question "How many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored?" comes from. We're just a notch in their bedposts.
 
Worst forum I've ever logged onto - a hot rodding forum called YellowBullet.com.... Their motto is posted "Where the weak are killed and eaten". They are NOT kidding. It's like the old west there - no mods at all, and F-bombs litter the scene. It's NUTS.
 
Good Plan. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
 
Wow, sometimes signing in later in the day can leave you in the dark. What did I miss?
(Must have been some raunchy stuff to offend a bunch of musicians!)  :eek:

All kidding aside, I'd also like to see something done to keep spam off the UW. I agree that this forum is very civil, and would like to see it stay that way. Perhaps a "wait-to-post" period wouldn't be such a bad idea....
 
double A said:
Hmmm....we were just asking ourselves what the point of all this SPAM could be; what the profit or motivation was......and just had a wild thought:


Massive Russian SPAM leading up to election day. Could it be the Russians are hiding what they are really up to within a blizzard of meaningless chatter?


Will all the Russian SPAM end tomorrow?


Is UW just a sacrificial pawn in a much larger game?


tenor.gif
Click to expand...


Not to quote myself, but election is done, and SPAM is gone.


Coincidence?  :dontknow:


WellinformedTangibleBobwhite-small.gif
 
Interesting. In other coincidental news, the trees have dropped all their leaves :icon_biggrin:
 
Should have known that the spammers would knock all the leaves out of them.
 
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