I'm sure a lot of you have noticed the recent increase in spamming on this forum. I certainly have (I just deleted seven accounts from one spammer.)

I feel it's about time to implement a plan of attack (well, sort of.)

If you come accross a spam thread, please use the 'Report This Post' button, which sends an email directly to my inbox alerting me. Please note whether it is spam or 'adult' spam. Once you have done this, please leave a post in the spam thread saying 'Reported'. That way, anyone else who finds the thread will know that it has already been reported, and not to send me another email.

So please, if you come across a spam thread that has been reported, (and possibly feel that I should have delt with it 'by now',) please don't report it again, otherwise my inbox just gets filled with spam as well. :)

may I ask what is spam ??I'm 16 years' and don't knwo half the thing's about the internet :unsure: so if you could let me know I can report if I see any !!
~Shearkin

Spam is undesired bulk advertising sent either by unsolicited email or posting in forums. See
the Wikipedia entry for spam.

I will gladly help :)

ok I get it now :cookie: I will for shore be looking for it !!
~Shearkin

Count with me ^^

Understood loud and clear. :)

-_- You gotta love spammers... I absolutely hate them.

Yes, me too. And even "genuine" forum members can make posts quite similar to spam, in that they don't contribute anything other than increase someone's post count. I hate clicking on a "new post" in a discussion topic and finding a single, poorly spelled sentence.

Spam tastes great! I shall enjoy catching whatever shreds I can. Count me in.

(dresses like a viking, sings the spam song)

*grabs a m16* Lock and Loaded! I shall smite all spammers in my sight!

Count me in!

Hi guys,

Sorry for the mass of spam lately, but they've started using email accounts such as gmail and yahoo, which I can't block without blocking a lot of potential genuine members, as well.

This means that spammers can join no problem, and the only way to keep on top of it is to keep deleting and banning. Not fun, but do-able. The regular spam reports are really great, and I do appreciate the effort you guys are putting in to keep the form usable. :)

I am in also, and probably why there is so many is because your forum is world wide and many people see your forum, so if they spam, others with find that one thread and it'll help the site they advertised! But, that's my opinion! But, I am with Deathshallcome as well! *joins with Death "Are ya ready?"*

I had a question for you, LightningFlash: do the admin controls for the forum allow you to customize the "validation" process for new accounts? Right now, the invisionfree software just wants new users to type in a number that's displayed to protect against bots. Another forum I was on recently (running on different software) had something different: instead of a number, it displayed a picture of one of the characters in the show and you had to type the character's name in order to create an account. Since random spammers don't know the characters and probably aren't going to spend time to look them up, I thought this was a clever way to keep spammers at bay.

As I said, I don't know if invisionfree supports anything like this, but I thought I'd pass the idea along just in case they offer some options here.

Unfortunately not. Well, as far as I can tell, anyway. I've had a thourough search in the Admin Control Panel, but I've never come across anything like that. The best I can do is tell it what emails, usernames and IPs not to let join, which is really only useful once a spammer has already joined, and given me their email server, which is only useful if it's one specifically set up for spam. The only other thing I can do is keep an eye on validating members, and get rid of spammers before they're fully joined.

That sucks. I really hate spammers. They make it less fun to be on when you continuly have to report people

(But I love your avvie LF. Srry, completely random

Will do *finds some C4 and plants it in their computer* BOOM!

Yeah, it's too bad the software doesn't offer an automated way to pre-screen people as they register. With all the spammers running around these days, they really need to add that.

That'd be really useful

Okay, so now I've set it so that no new accounts can be created without being approved by me. I probably won't stop every spammer this way, but hopefully the majority won't get through.

Of course, if I'm getting an influx of emails and it's driving me insane, we'll have to go back to the old way. Consider this a trial.

Thanks. :)