i’m new around here so i don’t know how bad textkit forum has had this spam problem but i’ve been here the last 30 mins reading some and its so irritating when spammers hit, i just refreshed the main index and some stupid spam bot or something (cause i know a person didn’t do that many posts so fast). but i just want to shout at the lowlife programmers around the world who always put spam in my morning read.
GO JUMP OFF A CLIFF YOU BUNCH OF LOW-LIFE NO-LIFE HINDER PART LICKIN KEYBOARD SPAMMING GORILLAS
The spammers seem to have increased in number recently around Textkit … even as recently as a few months ago I don’t think it was nearly so common.
Of course, spam is not such an awful thing that I would get violent over it. However, whenever Jeff can fit it into his busy schedule, I think it’s time to put in some anti-bot measures into the registration for Textkit (such as the classic “Type in what you see in this image”).
It’s quite a long time now that I visit Textkit and I’ve to say that this is the first time I see such a spam epidemia on this forum. It’s really sad that there are people ruining such a nice site and most of all it’s very annoying: you always think there is an interesting new message, but no, it’s only spam. Everywhere and in every subforum I find them: in the latin forum, in the greek one and even in the composition forum. At least you could exspect them to wite their spam in Latin or in Greek, at least in the composition forum, but no, even for that they are to lazy!
Let’s hope something can and will be done quickly against these not latin nor greek writing spammers!
look at this… a spammer hit a complain post about spamming…
ted****4 go jump in an amazon river full of paranas you spam bot i know you are nothing more than some lifeless code created by some immoral hacker who want to currupt the world whose mind is weak , lazy , and full of vile porn.
Every single day of my work I have to deal with spam control, and I would insist that is such an awful thing. Vast resources are wasted on this crap.
I personally get 1000+ spam messages a day at my work email address, which is public — I do actually want people to be able to contact me when necessary. Many of our staff (non-IT and IT both) who have been around longest get similar rates. While we do have powerful tools that lets me see mail I want and not the spam, we still have to process all of that to route things properly. A tiny little machine used to handle our incoming mail. Last week we rolled out a mail server which only a few years ago I would only have used as a database server. This is a hefty cost.
I’m the guy who delete’s Textkit’s spam. I assure you I can think of better ways to use my time.
My rant about parasites and the 95% useless state of the computing industry will have to wait for later.
well my purpose for starting this thread was just to take advantage of the open board and blow a little steam about spammers and how they come in to various forums and mess up a good thing just because it is a likely market for their filth. most of these porn companies want to get that filth especially in front of the younger audience that could more possibly become addicted to that filth.
other than that i agree with you annis you and the other moderators at textkit don’t have enough time to weed out spam that always seems to slip thru the cracks.
annis - one of the ways I dealt with spam over on my forum is requiring everyone who joins to send me an email explaining who they are, their academic credentials (if any), and why they wish to join the forum. Not one person has lied so far and started spamming the forum.
On the other hand people don’t want to have to do too much just to post on a forum, so if you required of them to send an e-mail, it would probably scare some away.
As I see it, the best solution is to ban the current spam accounts, and require picture-verification (where you have to read some letters in a picture) during registration. It isn’t too painful, and most if not all spambots can’t join.
And as far as I know, there are phpBB-plugins allowing that sort of verification … So just get cracking, administrator!
Well, two weeks ago I would have agreed more with GGG. However, my son recently played a “little” joke on me, by filling out a few online surveys “for a brand new PS3!” and using my email address “for prize-claiming information.”
Just install a mod for phpBB called myVIPcode if you can. It completely severed the spam problem on a site I administrate - 500 spammers had registered with 5 registering everyday. The registrations stopped and so did the spam.
I think they should gasp start charging for e-mail on a per e-mail basis. Even if it were only a tenth of a cent per e-mail, it would stop most spam as we know it. These guys are sending out thousands upon thousands of e-mails, if we just charged a little bit per e-mail it would stop it in an instant. I think it would probably only add 30 or 40 cents per month to most people’s internet bill, but it would be a huge deterrent for others.
Actually, some email systems (I think) have started something similar to what Kopio suggests … except instead of charging money, they force computers to do a computation for each email. If somebody only sends a few emails, then the computer can perform the calculation in a fraction of a second - if they send out several thousand emails, then the computer crashes. Of course this is punitive to legit yet large email lists, but so is charging money per email.
I have a friend who suggests the fee be at least 50 cents per email, but that the person receiving the email can have the option to waive that fee for any legitimate emails.
By the way, your avatar is a little creepy – what is that thing? It looks like a sort of half-brain, half-fish thing.
Even running a very (very!) small network in our office I waste hours downloading antispam updates, tweaking the system, cleaning up stuff. This all started (I think) because someone at work signed up for an information newsletter from what should have been a reliable source.
I am afraid I am very cynical about spam - if the large tel - communication corporations really wanted to stop it they could. But as all traffic means money in the coffers, why would they care? They people hosting domains for con men and fake prescription drug sellers make money, so why would they care? But politicians get voted in so they can be made to care!
Annis - I used to work in IT and we spent a ton of time putting in spam filters and still every new thing would get through.
I get about 1000+ spam emails a day. My email address is 15 years old or so and without a good email program sorting my mail I just don’t know how I’d manage.
Right now there are 3023 in my junk box that I have to delete. It is set to delete that stuff when Outlook closes, so that tells you about how busy my computer is.
I guess Comcast doesn’t do much at all to filter it on their end.
I guess I am lucky: my provider must have a very good spam filter in place, because I get no more than 10 spam emails a day. 1000+ sounds like a nightmare.
I am very fond of the Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. It makes a mistake (putting legit mail in the spam folder, or putting spam in the legit inbox), no more often than once a month. And when it does make a mistake, it is usually easy to spot, and it’s easier to fix. Also, if you report something as spam, Yahoo will automatically add that email address to your list of blocked email addresses. This, among other reasons, is why Yahoo has been by far my best experience among all the email services I have tried.
EDIT : And conversely, emails coming from addresses stored in my addressbook are never marked as spam, which also improves the accuracy of the SpamGuard.
… 
well maybe i shouldn’t have done that 
