Grrr

[Three Roses]

  isn't there a way to block that person's IP? It's really starting to bother me.

[Boy22]

Believe me Three Roses they are working hard on stopping the spammers. I had an email chat with Kizzie about it.

[Kizzie]

It's many Russian spammers joining daily versus one.  I have to remove them & their posts manually twice a day as don't have any way of blocking them.  Live people using multiple IP addresses versus bots so nothing I can do except remove them and their posts and hope they get tired at some point. 

[Blueberry]

So that's what's going on? Live people, not bots. Grrr. I'm sometimes on at a different time from Kizzie and then remove posts too. That's all I can do. And hope these people find a more constructive hobby.

[Kizzie]

I read up on this a bit last night and unfortunately there's a LOT of it in forums like OOTS. It's a (crazy) way make $$$ by embedding links to various products. In our case it seems to be related mostly to erectile dysfunction. Perhaps because they are foreign they think a self-help/support forum would have members who want/need these products  

We have protection against spam bots but not for human spammers. Unfortunately this means BB and I have to clear them off daily. This morning I noticed they have switched to using more North American email addresses and names and IPs that don't have "ru" in them so they are trying to hide the fact that they are Russian now. Why they don't use all that energy to build legitimate sites/services I don't know.   

As a last resort I will put in place a measure where new members will have to have my approval to join and post.  I'd rather not do that because I know when people make the decision to finally join that would make things more difficult and maybe cause them to step away.  However, if these spammers don't stop I will have to do so.

[Boy22]

What about new members being blocked from placing links within their posts until they reach a minimum threshold of posts. I've seen very little outside linking here anyway.

[Kizzie]

Good suggestion Boy, tks.  I'll have a look and see if that's possible. I already removed signatures because they can embed them in there. 

[annakoen]

Thank you all for all your effort in keeping this board clean 

[Kizzie]

I've changed profiles to remove web site links (in addition to removing signatures), and now have changed board settings so that each new member must be approved by me - seems to be working so far.  Fingers crossed!

[Three Roses]

 

[WoundedEagle]

What a tragedy that spammers and bots are interfering with people trying to survive and thrive. I hope we find a way to overcome this problem. I am having trouble dealing with constantly typing in letters and questions merely to post. Trying to be patient. Often get the letters wrong and have to do 3 times.

[Kizzie]

I just changed that requirement WoundedEagle as I'm able to catch the spammers just by approving new members.  You should be able to post no problem now.

Welcome by the way