Rise in spam posters

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theMoMA
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 5993
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:00 am

Rise in spam posters

Post by theMoMA »

Fellow posters,

The board has seen an influx of spam registrations lately. Many of these spammers post seemingly innocuous and sometimes even moderately relevant content meant to pass moderator approval. These posters seem more intelligent than typical spammers, and some quick research suggests that the accounts are likely run by actual people in foreign countries. Presumably the posts are later edited to include spam links or advertising content, although we've managed to zap most of them before they can reach that stage.

Despite their relative sophistication, these posts do have a few common hallmarks. They often have bad grammar and inconsistent capitalization, and although they may mention relevant points from the thread, they typically make very little sense. The users rarely have signatures.

If you see a post from a new user that may be a spam post, or an older post that has been edited to include spam links, please flag it. If you're on the fence about whether it's spam, and don't want to call a possibly legitimate new user a spammer, feel free to email me a link to the post at [email protected] and I'll check it out.

If you're on the board staff and are looking over post approval requests from a new user, please be diligent. If a post seems suspicious, ask an administrator to run an IP check on the user to see if it was posted from a foreign country before approving.
Andrew Hart
Minnesota alum
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