Forum spam

Thanks to all of you for all your hard work. It's very much appreciated.

Yes, thank you!

Thanks from me too! I am sure it is easier to catch the ones that are single posts and harder when they post on an existing thread.

You guys can't help it. They are posting faster than the spam can be deleted by you. Yesterday I reported 5 spams one right after another. Went back to General Europe, and 6 more had popped up while I was reporting the first five! I don't know why they bother doing this because none of us are going to click on their links!!

Thank you for all your hard work, Andrew, Kate, and the Web Crew!

Yes, thanks for the info. I was getting concerned that reporting as much as I have might have been annoying for you guys.

Mii

Thank you very much!
Keep up the good work!

I just reported 3. Not your fault. We can tell what is spam and don't reply.

You know what I think is weird is that many of them are on the RS Tours forum. Wonder how they picked that one out?

Expect to see more spam at night and on weekends, when the RS staff doesn't work.
Whatever the spam blocker misses, they'll clean up on Monday.

Kate,

Thanks for the hard work. It is very annoying, but we can deal with it. I noticed many of these have links to "reddit" (the quote marks are because I realize it's not really reddit).

Is there any point in letting the reddit website know about this? Maybe they can help somehow? I have no idea if it would or not. :)

Keep up the good work. :)

No need for you to apologize! You are doing a great job! I report all I see because I don't want an uninformed person clicking on those links, or thinking 'we'/Rick let's people sell/self promote on this site. You guys do great work and we appreciate it!

Ooof, this weekend was particularly brutal. I think I got everything.

Thanks so much for your diligence in reporting and your patience! Does everyone like the new "Report" feature?

Thanks again, everyone!

Definitely like the new REPORT feature better than the old. Thanks

Love the new report feature, which makes it much easier and faster to report spam posts.

And thanks for all your hard work - it is appreciated (in both senses - I like what you're doing, and I see how much work there is to do!)

Kate, I like the new report feature.

Yes! Very easy to use. Thanks, again.

Yes, using the new "Report" feature. Quick, easy.

Thanks so much for all you guys do! Too bad ridiculous spam takes so much time away from other things I'm sure you'd rather be doing.
The new "report" button is quick, easy, and straight to the point - perfect!

Sometimes Spam Happens
Our Spam-checking Bot finds most
Thanks Spam-checking bot!

The "report" feature was a great idea. Helps us to help you. Thanks!

Most of the recent spam seems to be gibberish posted on the Rick's Tours forum and appears to be an attempt to clog that forum so that people can't exchange information. I suspect it's either from a disgruntled former tour-taker or from some other tour operator trying to keep people from getting info on Rick's tours.

BTW, Andrew, can't you put something in the poster registration that prevents posts from newly registered posters from appearing until you have a chance to check their first one?

Also can't the report action also generate a "Has been reported" annotation to the post, or better yet, to its listing?

All of the spam has been from click farms posting links to reddit. It has nothing to do with a disgruntled tour participant or another tour company. They sign up once, and usually post just one time. There have occasionally been multiple posts that run the gamut through the forum, all with the same links. They are coming from this side of the globe, as they all start appearing about 08:00 each day. The Rick Steves Tours section of the forum is the most popular one that they use, but other sections get used too. Once I report a post, I also click on the name to see if they have multiple posts. It isn't very often, but they do sometimes.

One of the things that I like on Trip Advisor is that when a post is spam, (or any other kind of nasty post) it gets removed after 3 people report it. This might be a good function to have on this forum too. It keeps the board clearer. Is that a possibility Kate & Andrew?

A significant amount also is from services selling phony passports, documents, credit cards. These do not appear to come from our side of the globe, and the links are usually to web sites in the former eastern block or Africa. These are the ones that in the past old appear up to 20 times in one day.

Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. It is a major pain, isn't it?

Our spam blocker (affectionately [by me, just now] named Señor SpamBot) does snag most spam posts before we can get to them. Most of the time, when we come in on Monday morning, a good 90% of the spam has already been removed and the spammer has been banned as a spammer from our forums.

As for holding new posts until Andrew or I can look at them, I can definitely see the logic there. Unfortunately, with such a small staff, this would take up pretty much all of our time, since we get so many new sign-ups a day. And, most people who are newly registered and go on to post for the first time are not spam, so there's no need for us to monitor their first posting. And, as mentioned above, Señor SpamBot is doing a good job of catching spam before we even come into the office.

We don't think that this is a disgruntled tour member or another tour company going rogue and trying to take down our tour forum. We're just going through a bad patch of spammers right now. Their bots will go away eventually, especially if we keep being diligent about reporting and banning.

Thanks again for your patience and attention to these darned spammers!

Is there anyway to show that a post has been reported? That way you don't get 100 reports for the same spam post from all of us well meaning posters?