# Off Topic > Suggestions for Improvement >  >  Spam spam spam spam--aren't there any automated preventive measures we can take?

## 6StringJazzer

I have noticed an uptick in spam lately. They seem to be generating random yet syntactically correct phrases for subjects with spammy links in the body. They are also generating randomish user names.

It has been so long since I registered I do not remember what is required. We should:

Require Captcha or other robot test to allow registration
Validate email addresses, requiring a response from a verification email before they are allowed to post. (Unfortunately this could be faked quite easily by someone with enough motivation.)
Require reputation points before they are allowed to start a thread (this might be a bad idea since many people join so they can ask a question)

Moderators are wasting too much time playing Whack-A-Mole with spam.

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## MarvinP

It seems to me the message is always something like:

Seahawks vs Titans

A rule if the second word in a message is "vs" might work to delete those spams.

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## sandy666

when the spammer discovers this "vs" and starts to write "versus"

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## macropod

Some forums automatically moderate threads by new forum members when those posts include hyperlinks. Pending approval, such posts can only be seen by moderators & above. For some spammers, at least, the fact their own posts disappear as soon as they've posted them will act as a deterrent. And even for those spammers who are not deterred, their crap won't annoy other members or result in so many reported spam posts. The downside is that the occasional new member with a genuine post won't be able to see it and may post the same question multiple times.

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## Pepe Le Mokko

> Moderators are wasting too much time playing Whack-A-Mole with spam.



Isn't that part of their "job"?

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## 6StringJazzer

> Isn't that part of their "job"?



I can't tell if you're joking. You mean that "job" for which we do out of a sense of wanting to contribute to the community without any form of compensation, and rarely even being thanked? 

It's one thing to delete the occasional spam but I have had days recently where I've done 5-10 at a time.

I would rather spend my time fixing code tags, updating titles, notifying people of rules, and answering questions (which require the human touch) than policing spam, much of which could be done automatically with the proper infrastructure.

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## Kaper

Could be that these are real spammers (not just bots) as there (on registration page)
- is a captcha (well, not the new one - it may be the cause)
- some fields are required
- one checkbox is required too
And the acount is not active until activation link sent by mail is clicked by the user.
So in my eyes: big chances people are at least involved in creating such accounts. Spam itself can be then send by bots.

So if these are not bots but people - probably at the other side just infrastructure is not enough, but human is needed too  :Frown:

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## CAntosh

> Some forums automatically moderate threads by new forum members when those posts include hyperlinks.



This seems like a good place to start.  Maybe combine this idea with Jeff's suggestion to require reputation points?  In my mind, new users generally shouldn't need to post hyperlinks unless they're linking to another internal thread or identifying their own crosspost.  Perhaps restrictions could be made limiting their hyperlink capabilities to a small set of domains (the usual crosspost suspects) until they've reached a small reputation threshold?

I've never been a mod or developer so I'm unfamiliar with the technical challenges, but I've certainly seen other forums limit user permissions based on their posts and reputation.  We do it here with profile pics, why not hyperlinks?

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## macropod

Another possibility would be to auto-moderate/ban any first-time posts with 'Live Stream' as the last two words of the first paragraph - lots of spam lately (including today) with that.

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## 63falcondude

For what it's worth, I just witnessed a spammer create a thread using some random sentences and then edit the post to show the typical live stream links.

This may not have been caught automatically with a theoretical system in place to "read" the contents of the message.

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## MarvinP

Hey falcondude,

I hope you told the spammer about karma and how this behavior will plague them until they die.  If they don't want to wait that long then tell them that others then have the right to do dirt on them.  

I've heard of people hiring private eye's to find spammers and turn them into the police.  If you spam the wrong person you might also get Swatted.  My neighbor had this happen to him, when all he did was post a YouTube video that people thought was silly.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting 

They have this old saying of: "what goes around, comes around" which might be newer than "do onto others as you..."

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## Alf

As there is difficult to stop spam would it be helpful if forum members reported found spam?

There is the Sticky in "The Water Cooler" Please Mark Solved that I've posted in and found there is a very short time form reporting to getting the thread marked "Solved"
Perhaps spam links could be posted there as well with a request to remove this thread?

Alf

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## MarvinP

Hey Alf,

When I spot spam, I do a quick "Report Post" to tell the Mods to delete it.  I hope this is the correct action to delete those suckers.  :EEK!:   :Mad:

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## FDibbins

Reporting the thread as spam if the correct way to deal with these.  Mods and admins see these reports and respond, so thanks to all members who do report them

As far as stopping them automatically goes, if you recall (some of the longer-standing members), we went through a long period of Kitchen spam.  There appeared no way to automate stopping that, we were deleting and banning probably 20-30 a day, but still it kept coming.  And it wasnt just the ID's that changes, it was the IP too.  I myself banned almost 60 different IP's with something like 100 different ID's.

The spam we are dealing with now, has plagued other forums as well.  MrE has had this for months.

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## FDibbins

Ironically, just after posting this, I saw (and banned) this 1...




> Shapiro MD Shampoo
> However, if you are practicing "for yourself" by doing only a few workouts per week, then in that case, not doing two workouts will definitely not help to distort the training process. No hardware The vast majority of people doing their workouts only in the gym or in the fitness club do not have any training equipment at home. What to do in that case? It is important to remember that a great load is the weight of your body . http://healthpurelives.com/shapiro-md-shampoo/



It was a single post and had been marked SOLVED

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## AliGW

> Reporting the thread as spam if the correct way to deal with these.  Mods and admins see these reports and respond, so thanks to all members who do report them.



What Ford said! The first thing I do anytime I visit the forum is to check the reported posts list and deal with any that are outstanding. Attacks are at a tolerable level at the moment, but we do occasionally get inundated with the stuff. Just keep using the Report Post button and enter the word SPAM in your message - that's all you need to do. Never reply to a SPAM thread.

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## Kaper

MAy be there shall be mechanism not allowing url's in thread title - some recent spam noticed do have it like: https://www.excelforum.com/excel-for...old-cream.html

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## 6StringJazzer

> MAy be there shall be mechanism not allowing url's in thread title - some recent spam noticed do have it like: https://www.excelforum.com/excel-for...old-cream.html



Thanks--now deleted and banned.....

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## AliGW

Yes, the latest batch have all had URLs in their thread titles and been marked as SOLVED. I've managed to pick off quite a few recently within a minute or two of their posting.

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## Pepe Le Mokko

> I can't tell if you're joking. You mean that "job" for which we do out of a sense of wanting to contribute to the community without any form of compensation, and rarely even being thanked? 
> 
> It's one thing to delete the occasional spam but I have had days recently where I've done 5-10 at a time.
> 
> I would rather spend my time fixing code tags, updating titles, notifying people of rules, and answering questions (which require the human touch) than policing spam, much of which could be done automatically with the proper infrastructure.



If you want to be a moderator, that is one of the things moderators do. Responsibility goes with the "job" Moderating is like janitor's work. If you don't like it, you can always ask to be returned to  a non-moderator status. (or pretend you did not see the spam  :Smilie:  )
OTOH, if the forum owners are incapable/unwilling to take measures to limit spam or give mods the necessary tools ( fi access to the Mod cp) one should draw the conclusions as I did some years ago on this forum.

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## AliGW

Moderators do have access to the moderators' control panel and we are able to ban spammers relatively easily. It isn't really much of a problem at the moment - nowhere near as bad as the persistent attack we had for about ten days a while back. Yes, it goes with the territory and yes, it is sometimes onerous, but it has to be done.  :Smilie:

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## Pepe Le Mokko

It has been my experience that " spamming waves" often come from .ru addresses.
Don't know if that helps

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## 6StringJazzer

> If you want to be a moderator, that is one of the things moderators do.



Right, I get that. You are arguing with a strawman. I am not complaining about being a Moderator. I am, however, suggesting something that would improve the experience for both Moderators and all other members.

Let's go back and read the thread title. There is spam that I delete that could easily be detected and removed automatically (e.g., no content except an external link, external links on user's first post). I think it would be in the Forum's interest to do so.

However, I note that nobody who can actually answer my question has posted to this thread. So there's that.

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## Pepe Le Mokko

> There is spam that I delete that could easily be detected and removed automatically (e.g., no content except an external link, external links on user's first post). I think it would be in the Forum's interest to do so.
> 
> However, I note that nobody who can actually answer my question has posted to this thread. So there's that.



You are totally right, the forum's  owners do not seem to be concerned much about these kind of problems, and I must say I admire all you mods on this forum for staying around ( or is it some kind of masochism  :Smilie: )?

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## 6StringJazzer

> You are totally right, the forum's  owners do not seem to be concerned much about these kind of problems, and I must say I admire all you mods on this forum for staying around ( or is it some kind of masochism )?



It is more like martyrdom.  :Wink:

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## Alf

I see the spammers have made changes to the forum pages. Posting in the forum one will see in the left bottom corner of the post this:

normal.jpg

but some spammers have changed the page to this instead.

spam.jpg

and this makes it difficult to report the page as spam as the report button is removed.

Alf

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## sandy666

If someone report post before you did it - *Report Post* button will disappear

EDIT
look here:
https://www.excelforum.com/suggestio...ml#post4812387

I did it so you can't report again

If you can;t see post from link above it means Moderator was faster than you  :Smilie:

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## FlameRetired

@ Alf

It is as sandy says. In fact I reported the very spam you posted pics of. The Report button was there. When I finished it was gone.

Hope that helps.

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## Alf

> link above it means Moderator was faster than you



That I didn't think of, thumbs up for the quick Moderator  :Smilie:  and thanks for info.

Alf

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## sandy666

Welcome & Thanks  :Cool:

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## AliGW

I've just got rid of six SPAM threads. Those of us who are moderators tend to do a SPAM sweep first whenever we log on, and then deal with more as it arrives - it sometimes happens that I start to ban a spammer, but am unable to complete the job because one of the other mods has done it whilst I was starting - same sort of thing as the report button going missing.

I am glad that the report button behaves that way: what you don't see is the reported post list, and we have to mark each of these as solved as we deal with them - this would be a very onerous job if there were multiple reports per SPAM post, as threads cannot be marked as solved en masse.

Just keep reporting SPAM. You don't need to tell us or ask us to remove it - just type SPAM in the report and leave the rest to us.

Keep up the good work!  :Smilie:

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## FlameRetired

Will do. And thanks for all your work on this. Really appreciate it.  :Smilie:

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## AliGW

It's nothing, really - the attacks are no worse than on any othar forum, and dealing with them goes with the territory.  :Smilie:

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## FDibbins

If there are a few of them (threads), you can select them all in the regular thread list, and ban them all together that way, using the Moderator icon at the bottom, no need to go into each 1 to ban them - doesnt do anything to help "solve" them all in 1 go tho  :Frown:

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## AliGW

Yes, I know about banning en masse - thank goodness we can at least do that! It's a shame we can't 'solve' the reports in a similar way.  :Smilie:

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