Spammers

Ian

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It looks like we're getting a lot of Chinese text spam at the moment - we're cleaning it up as soon as we spot it and I'm working on tweaking the anti-spam filters each time they post. They're very persistent compared to the ones we usually get, so this may take a day or two to get under control!

If you spot anything that looks like spam, please hit the report button and we'll tackle it ASAP :).
 

MaryMary

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Out of curiosity, I cut and pasted one of the sentences into Google search. (Trying to see if it would lead me to a translation site!)

What it led me to is a whole page of various forums! :rolleyes:

Thank you for cleaning it up when you see it, those poor people at the video game forum have 50 threads of it!! :eek:
 
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Out of curiosity, I cut and pasted one of the sentences into Google search. (Trying to see if it would lead me to a translation site!)

What it led me to is a whole page of various forums! :rolleyes:

Thank you for cleaning it up when you see it, those poor people at the video game forum have 50 threads of it!! :eek:
My computer translated it. There was 2 different messages and both involved colleges and universities and neither one made any sense. The entire pages were a list of different colleges and the message to all was the same. At first I thought it might be some kind of code but on the first day it was one message and on the second day the same list of colleges but a different message. Thankfully our tech gurus fixed it...........I hope forever
 

zigs

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Ian's put some extra security in, they're getting caught in the spam filter before getting to the main boards now :)

Thank you to everyone for your vigilance (y)
 
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Ian's put some extra security in, they're getting caught in the spam filter before getting to the main boards now :)

Thank you to everyone for your vigilance (y)
I always thought spam was a way to make money but this stuff made no sense at all. It was more like sending a message to a college registrars office. What was their motive?
 
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Motive Pure Vandalism. Several years ago my website was hacked. Seven years of data made unusable. Message was full screen. HACKED.

I had the data mostly pictures on my computer, but it was too tedious to re-enter. It was sort of like dying. Such is life.
 
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Motive Pure Vandalism. Several years ago my website was hacked. Seven years of data made unusable. Message was full screen. HACKED.

I had the data mostly pictures on my computer, but it was too tedious to re-enter. It was sort of like dying. Such is life.
But as far as I know nothing was damaged at all. So no vandalism. All it actually did was to take up space. This took some time to do. It is like they just made a list of who they wanted to send the 2 messages to and posted it on a gardening site which has no ties to any college. Kind of like sending something to the wrong address in the mail or something.
 

MaryMary

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Ian's put some extra security in, they're getting caught in the spam filter before getting to the main boards now :)
YAY, IAN!!! (y)


Motive Pure Vandalism.
In the case of your website, yes, probably. But they didn't erase threads, or render the forum inoperable, so I think there must have been a different motive here.
 

MaryMary

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posted it on a gardening site which has no ties to any college.
When I googled it, they also posted on a video game forum, and a guitar forum. One of them had a slightly different user-name. Instead of " sadfad07" (or whatever it was,) it was "adfad09" or something like it.

There were other types of forums, it was a whole page of forums. Makes no sense.
 
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When I googled it, they also posted on a video game forum, and a guitar forum. One of them had a slightly different user-name. Instead of " sadfad07" (or whatever it was,) it was "adfad09" or something like it.

There were other types of forums, it was a whole page of forums. Makes no sense.
What exactly did you google
 

MaryMary

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Before the thread was deleted, I copied a sentence of the Chinese writing, and pasted it into google search. They've been using the same content, or close enough that Google picked it up!
 
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Usually spammers (and this one was probably a bot, not an actual human) have one of two goals: introduce malware/viruses or try to push a spammy site - usually selling various ahem fake enhancement meds, or for phony loans or sweepstakes and so on.

But those require naive readers to click on a link. Weirdly, the walls of Chinese text I saw did not include any links. So this may be a persistent, but ultimately really inept, spammer organization. :D

Oh and thanks to admin and mods for tackling this so promptly! I used to run a very active message board and stuff like this can be incredibly time consuming to deal with.
 

MaryMary

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They're ba-a-ack!!! Already reported...


Edited to add: How does a bot join a forum? :confused:
 
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They're gone already! Maybe Ian couldn't sleep? They were gone within 30 minutes of my reporting them!!

Wow, just wow!! :notworthy: :notworthy: (y)

Ah, the benefits of being in a different timezone! :D

I checked my emails as soon as I woke up, and removed the spam as soon as I saw your reports. Thanks for flagging them up! (y)
 

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