When Spammers Attack!

[gav240z]

Hi Everyone,

Every so often we get a spam attack on the site. Here is how to identify it and deal with it.

 

What to do

The most important thing to do is not comment. Commenting on a spam post just returns the forum thread to the top of latest activity lists. Spammers do not read replies, they simply use automated scripts to add the comment to thousands of websites using the same forum software. Never click on any links. These can lead to non-work safe / family safe material or worse could lead to websites with malware / viruses or install tracker cookies on your browser.

 

The best thing you can do to help myself and the moderators is report the post immediately. See screenshot attached.

 

This fires off an email to myself and the other moderators for our attention. We will delete the topic / poster as soon as possible.

 

You can add a comment to help us with any other information.

 

Also note: Its fine if multiple people report the same post and is far better than replying to the poster.

 

Different Types of Spam

Link Spam

These users often sign up and post a comment that is very vague / ambiguous. In their forum signature is a link to some kind of website that is usually keyword type link eg: cheap baseball bats or something similar.

 

These spammers do this because sites such as this that are prominent in search results are often rated highly by searched engines such as Google. In order to try and improve their website rankings or appearance in search engines for certain keywords they are trying to add links back to their own / client websites. This form of link spam is a "black hat" search engine optimization technique. Its important we remove these links from the site ASAP as we don't want Auszcar being associated with any such sites.

 

Other Spam

Sometimes fake user registrations are all spammers try and achieve. In some cases they post inappropriate pictures or comments. Generally a spammer is someone who ads no value to our site. I delete these users and / or ban them, but its not always possible to properly ban them.

 

 

Final word. The new content management system I will eventually have the site running on will make use of an anti-spam plugin that uses trends from thousands of websites to identify spam comments before they are even submitted.