What's going on.....

[1970 cortina GT]

Has this Forum been infiltrated by the Russians?? Such a shame, ruining a very informative site.

[IFHP]

Yes, major spam storm. I've just deleted dozens of post and about a dozen spammer addresses. I wish that when I banned a member, it deleted all of their post at the same time, but apparently it doesn't work like that.

Thanks to Brett Wilkie for contacting me to let me know what is going on. I'm trying to deputize as many regular members as I can to help fight this, but I don't have as many administrative powers as James has.

Hopefully these spammers will give up at some point.

[Brett Wilkie]

Thanks Michael for responding so quickly, I think that perhaps one of the key things is to not let them in but I have no idea how the new member filter system works? On a different note, I have to ask myself what these brain challenged mouth breathers think they will gain by spewing shite on a forum like ours?? 

[1970 cortina GT]

And another batch this morning....

[BigFred]

I also don't recall what the criterion was (if any) for becoming a member of the forum. If there's any, maybe stop accepting new members for a while. If there's no criterion, maybe institute one (like answer a basic question about Enfos).

[stanchfi]

I've got a security question set up, but somebody figures it out, then the bots create a ton of accounts.
I've changed the security question, and deleted the obviously fake accounts.
Hopefully things will quiet down for a while, but I'm sure they will be back.
I'll try to keep a closer eye on things for the next couple days

-James

[BigFred]

I've got a security question set up, but somebody figures it out, then the bots create a ton of accounts.
I've changed the security question, and deleted the obviously fake accounts.
Hopefully things will quiet down for a while, but I'm sure they will be back.
I'll try to keep a closer eye on things for the next couple days

-James

Appreciate the efforts you're taking. Sucks that it has come to that.

[angliagt]

Thanks for all of your hard work!

[Brett Wilkie]

Thanks for the cleanup, I still have to ask, what gain is in it for the spammers? Nobody bites n that sort of stuff.

[stanchfi]

The advantage for the spammers, is that one of the characteristics google uses to rank websites, is how many other websites link to that website.
By creating accounts (all done by bots) and either posting or even putting a link in their signature/profile that counts as one more link to their website.
If you have bots do it for you on hundreds of sites, it is an easy way to get your site listed higher in the google results.
Because this forum has been around almost 17 years, It is a good target for the bots.

-James

[Brett Wilkie]

Interesting, guess we will have to be a step ahead of that sort of thing?

[BigFred]

Here we go again...

[IFHP]

I've got a security question set up, but somebody figures it out, then the bots create a ton of accounts.
I've changed the security question, and deleted the obviously fake accounts.
Hopefully things will quiet down for a while, but I'm sure they will be back.
I'll try to keep a closer eye on things for the next couple days

-James

Thanks James.