Are the Spams on the Forum getting worse?

There do seem to be a lot of them, but the forum members are good about reporting these - both posts and replies. The webmaster is great at getting them deleted asap. Two factor authorization or Captcha logins are more for websites where you would enter sensitive information. I hardly think they would ever be necessary for a travel forum such as this one.

There has been a bit more recently after an extended period of near zero. A year or so ago the RS techies did some behind the scenes work to choke off what had been a nightly assault of spam clutter.

Looks like the mice have gotten craftier and the tech corp will need to make a few tweaks to plug the holes.

I think it was worse a few years ago.

While I report them, I don’t really think we need a lot of extra security. I’m hoping that most people on here are smart enough not to click on the stupid post, and if they aren’t well, then you can’t protect people from themselves.

We see more of them during the hours that our trusty webmaster is allowed to do stuff like go home, sleep, eat, shower... You know, stuff like that. Just report 'em and he'll bizbag the varmints during office hours.

Agree with Stan that it was a lot worse several years ago. All in all, the webmaster and staff do a super job keeping the ones that slip through to a minimum. The writing in most of the ones that do get by (AI created or not) is so full of "ad speak" and or garbage, that they stick out like a neon sign at night.

Agree with Kathy.

Seems to be more of them during the "off hours" of the webmaster.

And agree that they seem more "sophisticated".

I think webmaster has reported before that some of our Europe-based colleagues (thank you Nigel) were diligent at flagging stuff that shows up in the off hours.

As far as tightening up access, I think they really don't want to discourage first-time users from asking for help, so that might not be ideal.

Wow, 17 of those $#$%# airline spams so far this morning. 🤬
Makes a lot of extra work for our already busy webmaster!

Maybe a subroutine to prevent posts containing 10 or 11 digits in the question line. Seems like this is an attempt to get these phony phone numbers onto google archive.

IThese are almost certainly being generated bu one individual or business, making multiple names to get them through.

Holy cow! This is bad this morning. Besides being annoying, it pushes legitimate forum posts further down the line.

I take back what I said earlier.

I gave up counting at 50 airline spams this morning. Poor webmaster’s job is never done.

This specific issue, the bogus airline ads all leading back to an overseas travel agency, has been here before. I can't recall if this was pre or post pandemic. But it sure seems like they find out that they have been tagged as boss by us and then - likely out of spite - repost everything under new screen names.

Since the most important thing for them is getting their phone line picked up by search engines, perhaps a filter can be set to not allow phone numbers in topic names (and also eliminate those withemojis and non-text characters)

I've reported any obvious spam with 0 replies

Surely someone must have invented some kind of counter-spam software, that would flood the originator with a zillion system-clogging responses. Just deleting and blocking doesn't seem like enough.

Absolutely out of control! Getting hard to sort through the "All Topics" list.

Yes, they are very annoying, but if they bother you too much just wait until after 8:00 AM PT to get on the forum. Give the webmaster time to get to them. Obviously the clean sweeper program isn't getting them all and maybe (hopefully) just needs some tweaking.

They're certainly more numerous recently (this morning). As of 9:35 PDT they're still coming in, but at relatively low volume.

I've flagged 51 so far since I got up. I've even reported a couple BEFORE they appeared in the general feed (different views into the forum get populated with new messages at different times - something about how messages are procesed - it seems the first place they show up is in the "USERNAME's Posting History" view...I currently have a browser tab open for each spammer who I've reported today (29 user accounts so far). New messages appear there before they appear in the "All Topics" list, so I've been able to report and reply to a couple before they even hit the "Al Topics" view (I take some satisfaction in that).

I just saw another pop up when I refreshed one previous spammer's Posting History. It had already been removed. So the system is indeed working. But it does take a few minutes. Aaaand...there's another one...

I'm noticing that the forum's performance seems to be a little sluggish right now - at least to me (having 52 browser tabs open as I watch each spammer's Posting History might be effecting my own browser performance). I can imagine the forum software's anti-spam algorithms are getting a good workout right now.

That's partly because some decide to respond to the spam by saying
they have reported it. Which just brings the spam back to the top. As,
I think, the Webmaster has asked several times, the better approach is
to report but not respond.

I used to be of the opinion that "reported" was counter-productive, for the same reason. I thought there was an update at some point where the webmaster said one response was OK. So I have started doing that (just a single "reported" line per spam, not more than one).

Given the quantity of spam recently, it would be good to get an update on that specific preference.

Today is the worst I’ve seen!
Thanks to the staff who work hard to try and keep these idiots , or more likely robots, out .

Many of the spam posts are now disappearing, things should clear within the hour.

And.....the storm is over. Thanks to the webmaster for tidying things up. Every account from last night's spamstorm seems to be gone, all spammy posts have been removed (at least all of them that I've seen).

Note that in some views of the forum, you will still see some of the old spam listed (notably, the default Travel Forum landing page, under "Recent topics" unfortunately). But clicking on those will just show you Rick On The Floor. Those will roll off as new posts appear in that list, might take a little while. And one of the spammers may try and slip another through, but the deluge appears to be over. And it's not even Friday yet! 👍

Contrary to what @stan wrote above Nigel is far from the only Brit to report the spam in the hours when the US is asleep. People may not always be aware of that as I often just report them 'nem com'.

If there are a few I will add a note of 'reported' if only to keep track of where I am in doing my reporting. A personal aide-de-memoire if you like.

But where there is a deluge as in today I rapidly stop doing that both to save time, but also to try to stop encouraging the spammers by giving them a reply. But they are still being quietly reported in the background.

However the bigger picture is actually responding to the new 'real' queries which are coming in on the forum, and other things I have to do personally, far away from this forum. I can not imagine simply having the time to be monitoring dozens of windows of spam. For instance I have 21 e-mails from my colleague in Surrey, about previously unrecorded war memorials to handle this evening.

There have been a few new ones in the past 30 minutes, but they are getting quickly removed (message removed and account obliterated, often in under 60 seconds). That's great to see. So at this point, very few forum users are even seeing the new spam, it's disappearing fast.

I for one would still like an update on whether or not the "Spam reported" response message is counter-productive, benign, or helpful. My guess is it's a mixture of all those things, but not really very significant either way.

Responding tells the spammer someone has seen their spam - but (assuming an English-speaking human sees that) all it tells them is that their efforts have been wasted. So does that encourage them, or discourage them? I doubt it moves the needle either way.

Responding tells other forum users it has been reported. So there's rarely (effectively never) a second "response". Does that make other users stop clicking the "report" button? Is that a good thing? I dunno. I will typically click the "report" button even if I see someone has reported it, because I assume that accumulating multiple "reports" may (at some point) trigger an automated response - but that's just a guess. If all "reported" spam requires a manual review, then any more than the initial "report" may not be needed or helpful. But it (subsequent clicks of the "report" button) probably doesn't hurt.

We may not get answers to such questions because it's best not to disclose too many details about how spam is fought.

This morning I felt the webmasters must be leary about coming into work these days. I hope they plan for an extra cup of coffee, as they have had their work cut out for them.
I also would like an update about the 'reported' posts. My last read was 'please don't do it'. I reported and move on. I expect several do. I also don't report every one, because if all are targeting one or two forums, the web guys will figure that out.

Hi. That was plenty of spam and my apologies that it spilled over. Fyi, there was plenty more that you never saw. I only say this to indicate that this forum is not a free-for-all for spammers. ;) Thanks to Kathy for acknowledging that we need to be able to sleep, but we know it impacts you when this sort of thing happens. We've had to endure some spam influxes at random times in the past, and we'll make it through this one too. Thanks for trusting that we're working on it. And the timestamp on this post will probably indicate that some extra work is being done.

"We may not get answers to such questions because it's best not to disclose too many details about how spam is fought."

Yup. :)

My general guidance is still not to add 'reported' to a thread. No one's in trouble if they do, but we'd prefer not to bump the thread among other considerations. In other scenarios, when it's not 100% obvious if it's spam, then definitely don't.

Thanks very much (as always!) to those who submitted reports. I appreciate that this community cares to help keep it clean.

Thanks, everyone!

OK, thanks for the update. Yes, apparently a long day.

So, no "spam reported" replies needed/requested. Got it.

Thank you again for your efforts.

... and there was another one at 6am UK this morning in like vein to yesterday, which has already been reported and cleared by the webmaster so fast that most US east coasters would never have seen it. West coasters might have before they went to bed.

Considering Webmaster was working past midnight local time, Starbucks stock should be up when the market opens.later today.

Your efforts to keep a tidy Forum are appreciated.

It has started again as of ~3 am PDT. Same same.

Yep, they're baaaaaaack.
Sincerely hope the varmints can be exterminated without Webmaster having to spend another night at the office! It's Friday. Add Happy Hour to eat/sleep/shower.

They’re very persistent. Does anybody fall for this nonsense though? Or do the tiny few who do fall for it make it worthwhile? In my view the sheer number of similar posts positively shrieks ‘spam’ or ‘scam’. Thanks to the webmeisters for being on the (long and presumably tedious) case though!

In regards to the above "Does anybody fall for this nonsense though?" I have to ask, only a tad off-topic: Does anyone out there fall for the ubiquitous phishing e- mails telling you that you have been charged for the renewal of your McAfee/Norton/GeekSquad, call this number to cancel? (and why is it always these three?) FWIW, here is a link where you can report abuse by a gmail account holder, as most of these are gmails: https://support.google.com/mail/contact/abuse.

What concerns me is how many newcomers show up on the board and ask if "Buyyourcheapticketshere.com" is okay. They are not savvy and may think those are the phone numbers to call.

First, I want to add my thanks to the hardworking webmasters here. Thank you !

Second, I think this was mentioned earlier, but at least some spam is not intending to actually sell something, but is meant to put phone numbers and/or url's in public to increase their search ranking. A quick search would show that there are a lot of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) businesses out there.

And if this post should be deleted, I understand...

Joe, I forgot to get a stbx coffee this morning and now it's down 2 points today. Sorry for your stock price. :)

No need to remove your post travelerguy. Part of what I do for Rick is SEO and that's easily what's going on. It's less a threat for forum members and a greater threat for what ends up in Google's index, especially with their new AI-beta results. Either way, it has no place here. I'm still working on it more today beyond basic cleanup.

I forgot to get a stbx coffee this morning and now it's down 2 points today. Sorry for your stock price. :)

That proves how badly you need it.

Do you not have the "buddy system" at the office to ensure that everyone is properly caffeinated? :-)

Not when I'm working from home! I suppose the french-press system my wife and I use at home is close enough. ...because what else would a webmaster for European travel use?

Thanks again for everyone's patience. I've removed another ~30 accounts today, so it's still coming but we're handling it and have a plan for the weekend.

Persistent critters, aren't they.

Early AM Apr 3 (PDT), airline trash posts have been reported

't'in't a great load of fun

The number of spam posts in the last hour is ridiculous.

Seems like a tremendous waste of effort by this particular spammer. Every single post gets reported (probably by at least a half dozen of us) within the first minute or two after they appear, often within seconds.

(For others in the hunt, I have found that messages first appear under the account's "Posts by (account name)" listing - so it's possible to report them even before the post appears actually anywhere...you just need to have the "Posts by (account name)" page already open, from their previous spam, and refresh that view...when the next one comes in, you'll see it listed there before it effectively goes live anywhere.)

They'll certainly all be gone in 5 or 6 hours at the absolute latest. Staff also appear to be fine-tuning automated filters/responses (lets hope that continues).

This too shall pass.

since the purpose is raise the profile on google searches it doesn't matter how long they are around until zappage - every reply boosts it up and meets the need of the bot doing the spamming

It looks like a new strategy today. I think they have figured out that when several of the same posts appear the internal controls here seem to start catching and deleting them, so now they are lim biting to one or two posts and then starti9ng a new screen name to keep repeating them.

I wish I had noticed today's posts on this thread before I started massive reporting.

since the purpose is raise the profile on google searches it doesn't matter how long they are around until zappage - every reply boosts it up and meets the need of the bot doing the spamming

Exactly! Heed the words of Nigel.

@Larry, may I also bring attention to the Webmaster's reply up this thread that they prefer we don’t write 'reported' or anything else on obvious spam? Report as per the link, but no need to broadcast....unless more subtly embedded somewhere.

They're BAAAAAACK!!

Nigel, this current round look so ridiculous that anyone silly enough to fall for them deserves it.

And the spammers are now responding to their own postings saying they are good sites.

They're BAAAAAACK!!

Yes they are. This round is so ridiculous it is almost funny.

zappage has been effective