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Spam all over the site. REPORT guys!


Will.

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  • Will. changed the title to Spam all over the site. REPORT guys!

It should be stated that the other mods do a huge job of getting rid of spammers. I have only done it a couple of times when I'm here and they haven't been already removed.

Please acknowledge  that the mods do this day in and day out. 

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It's true. The reason you don't see much spam here is because it's usually gone within minutes of its posting.

It is not an automated process. It's because we really hate spam. I am delighted when I get to stomp one, although that only happens when those in time zones to my East have gone to bed for the day. Fortunately for me, even wookies sleep sometimes.

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I took down a good 4 or 5 pages worth earlier in the day myself. I checked the posting time and they'd only been active for about 7 or 8 minutes, so it definitely doesn't take long to make a huge mess on the forums.

I'll usually have the forum open on a second monitor while I'm working and catch them on their first or second post, and the spam filters usually work out that something is sus pretty fast and hides the threads from regular users, so we can get in and clean up the mess without it being horrible for everyone.

I've been away from the machine for a while today so it looks like it's been keeping everyone on their toes!

For anyone wondering, there are some pretty robust spam filters in place and we just added a bunch of terms to it, which definitely worked well... for a while. It's really like a game of whack-a-mole.

Definitely report the spam if you see it, the mods are spread over a bunch of different time zones which helps when each of us are busy with work / life (every mod is a volunteer), and one of us will get onto it ASAP.

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I do report them, but (1) the report button is now hidden and many other users might not know where it has been moved to, (2) it is not spam (unwanted legitimate marketing), (3) the posts are a sign that somewhere there is someone either knowingly or unknowingly running malicious code, and JMO (4a) there  should be a category for this ("malevolent post," "potential domain or site attack," or something like that) and (4b) considering that this is probably the # 1 usage of the report button, it should be the default.

If I am the first one to report 10-25 posts, make my job easier!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited by User 905133
fixed typo
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PPS: I feel bad for the moderators who have to voluntarily do work that shouldn't happen in the first place. Most (if not all)  of the bogus posts I have seen over the past several months have been boiler plates. Two or three should be enough to stop them from being posted and the account put on moderation status.

Edited by User 905133
added "of" (missing word)
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Graig I know that on some other forums your suggestion is used. I don't know if it would be a useful action here. It may come to that.  

 

The staff have done a great many things to stop the spamming. They are still working on solutions.

 

I would like to see these spammers spend some time jail and fined a lot of money! I don't understand why they do this. It can only make anything they say an annoyance. No one wants anything they are selling.  

 

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14 minutes ago, John said:

Graig I know that on some other forums your suggestion is used. I don't know if it would be a useful action here. It may come to that.  

 

The staff have done a great many things to stop the spamming. They are still working on solutions.

 

I would like to see these spammers spend some time jail and fined a lot of money! I don't understand why they do this. It can only make anything they say an annoyance. No one wants anything they are selling.  

 

John, respect for the mods, they do a great job, really.
 

BUT, why wouldn’t .Craig.s suggestion work here. I feel it would.

J

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Web site security is such a thankless job - seriously, thanks to the mods here, I think I've noticed so much less trouble overall here than in many other virtual platforms over the years. -And things like that lately seem to be on an upswing, and AI automation in general is going to help it get worse.

Still, so far it's still down to human caused foibles - isn't it?  -I once had the unfortunate experience to be in contact with one of the earliest spammers, briefly, back in ancient times (!). She started sending unsolicited self-marketing mass messages on Usenet, if I recall correctly.   -In conversations with her, she basically stated that since the Internet itself was a product of tax-supported infrastructure, as a taxpayer she should be able to do with it as she saw fit.  -I even have old friends who feel that if something is "free to all", they should be free to use it in any way they deem appropriate.  -Of course, the logic never holds when someone uses that type of methodology, and it hurts them personally. Always a moving line between what we "can" do and what we should do - isn't it?

Painful to think about that story, as that person even went on to make money off of a book, explaining her "marketing techniques", when she gained some notoriety for her actions. -I hope she has would up in some place that endlessly repeats cheap TV ads over and over, in a locked room, with no remote control or something. -Sigh.

Edited by JnTuneTech
grammar...!
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Dear admins and moderators.
I am concerned that my reporting of one large amount of spam after another will turn a large amount of reports into the spam for admins and moderators.
If I find a large amount of spam, do I have to report it all? Or is it sufficient to report only a few of them?

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Yeah, just one or two is generally fine - it's usually between 1 and 5 accounts doing the work, usually just the one but we do get waves where there's a big batch one after another that makes it hard catching them all. But if we get an alert that something is up, I know I'll go through and just do a check overall of the moderation queue and any posts that the forum software has hidden by default.

I actually do agree that there should be some kind of forum gatekeeper, and probably some more robust deletion tools, but it's a balancing act - how do we stop the spammers without making hard for legit new users to get on and ask questions without them getting annoyed, flipping a desk and threatening to "GO TO ABLETON!!!!!!11!!"    The forum update did add a lot more useful tools for this though.

Ultimately that's up to the admins, as mods we have the power to clean up spam, ban spammers, and the usual mod things like keep the peace and keep the forum clean and running well, and I've personally passed on a few suggestions regarding this stuff.

In the meantime, cheers for the reports, guys. Like I said, sometimes this catches us when we're off working or eating or just between timezones and can take a while to sort out, but we'll get onto it as soon as we see it.

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2 hours ago, User 905133 said:

PS: Add a button for "Stop posting anything from this account until approved by a moderator!"

Yep, that's there already.

Basically if the forum software thinks something looks sus then it will hide any threads made by that poster, and then we have the ability to go in and flag that account as a spammer when we see it next, which bans them. So it's not ideal, but at least it's not dumping crap everywhere if the software catches it out. I also suspect that a good amount of thumbs down reactions would trigger the software to hide threads too as potential spam, so that might be an option too if you guys see it.

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1 hour ago, Jeremy Oakes said:

John, respect for the mods, they do a great job, really.
 

BUT, why wouldn’t .Craig.s suggestion work here. I feel it would.

J

It could, and we already have something like it. But this is a user forum for help and dealing with problems that may need to be addressed quickly. Through the years we have had many calls for help when a user is doing something that is time critical. How would you like to try to get help here if it takes days to be approved when first logging on? It may come to that though.

Further the people doing the spamming are hacking not just posting. They are determined to continue doing it no matter what we do.   

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12 minutes ago, John said:

It could, and we already have something like it. But this is a user forum for help and dealing with problems that may need to be addressed quickly. Through the years we have had many calls for help when a user is doing something that is time critical. How would you like to try to get help here if it takes days to be approved when first logging on? It may come to that though.

I think that would be a small price to pay for not having this forum filled with fake 800 phone numbers and spam. After all, newly registered users desperately needing immediate help would still be able to contact Cakewalk tech support directly instead of going through this user forum.

Another way would be to severely restrict the number of posts a newly registered user is allowed to post in one day, maybe in combination with also tracking the IP address of user registrations and blocking more than say two or three user registrations from the same IP address in a single day.

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7 minutes ago, Canopus said:

I think that would be a small price to pay for not having this forum filled with fake 800 phone numbers and spam.

I'm tending to agree with this. 

Plus with the download of CbB and the new Cakewalk Sonar and Cakewalk Next you can have a reminder to sign up to the forum and have a disclaimer that it can take 24-48 hours to be approved as a registered user.  If they choose not to take advantage then they only have themselves to blame.  Take some personal responsibility people and help keep this a nice community.

Peace  :D

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