New "Potential Spammer" Alert

Great idea! I always wonder if I am overwhelming you guys with reporting spam not knowing if someone else already has. This deserves a pat on the back to whoever came up with the idea.

That's all

It appears to be a voting mechanism. The first triangle reports the post, and then the message is highlighted for others to give their opinion. I imagine it is a way to lighten up the moderator/admin workload through crowd-sourcing.....

vreihen16 wrote

It appears to be a voting mechanism. The first triangle reports the post, and then the message is highlighted for others to give their opinion. I imagine it is a way to lighten up the moderator/admin workload through crowd-sourcing.....

It makes sense. It reduces the amount of spam reports they get as I'm sure there are many multiple reports for the same post and if two of us agree, POOF, it's gone Tag team.

I'm sure it will also reduce the amount of people responding to spam not realizing it's spam, which in turn will reduce the number of times YOU need to tell someone they are responding to a spambot.

I saw it differently: a potential spammer "obviously" made a reservation post in a popular thread to add a link later (by editing), when the post sinks and nobody will notice. It wasn't a violation yet, so I didn't report it and had to return the next day: there was the poll! It would've been too annoying to watch that post otherwise. And then/now it's gone.

So it's not about numerous reports, it's really useful regarding unreported advances: I've just reported a recurring thread crapper who apparently works on it's counts, gets banned (I don't know what for: PMs?) but the crap remains uncleared. No current "misbehavior" except for obvious(?) self-appreciation from another account.

cmyx6go wrote

Great idea! I always wonder if I am overwhelming you guys with reporting spam not knowing if someone else already has. This deserves a pat on the back to whoever came up with the idea.

That's all

The battle never ends but thanks for the comment, always nice to see when someone notices 👍

Someone is using good for evil. I’ve seen posts from 2 long time members flagged as spam in OT with this new system. I voted that both looked good. It’s clearly someone that doesn’t agree with the posters opinions or that they started the thread and are just stirring the pot. Might I suggest a warning or penalty for someone falsely flagging something as spam. This isn’t a honest mistake. It is deliberate. I hate people.

That’s all.

EDIT. I may have misinterpreted the spam flag. It looks like a new member, possibly a spammer quoted the long time posters and his posts were flagged. Jaden5566 but it looks like he has innocent posts. I don’t know.

My jury is still out on Jaden. He's posting generic crap all over BP-OT and looks like a retro-edit SEO spambot laying claim to threads before editing in SEO links in a few days, but I can't personally call it spam until he/it actually does those edits.

He doesn't seem to be trying to run up his post count to get PM privileges to download pirated software/coding that I can tell.....

vreihen16 wrote

My jury is still out on Jaden. He's posting generic crap all over BP-OT and looks like a retro-edit SEO spambot laying claim to threads before editing in SEO links in a few days, but I can't personally call it spam until he/it actually does those edits.

He doesn't seem to be trying to run up his post count to get PM privileges to download pirated software/coding that I can tell.....

I may have jumped to conclusions here. At first I thought someone flagged TommyG and Mousad’s posts due to not agreeing with subject matter. My bad. I’ve been very careful and not flagging something I’m not sure of.

cmyx6go wrote

My bad. I’ve been very careful and not flagging something I’m not sure of.

I tag the ones that aren't ripe for reporting with a visitor message in their user profile, and go back to check on their posts/threads after a few days to see if they were edited for SEO/spam.....

I kinda' don't know what any of you are talking about, but appreciate the effort to keep spammers away!!!!!

StradaRedlands wrote

I kinda' don't know what any of you are talking about, but appreciate the effort to keep spammers away!!!!!

I THINK it's the little yellow triangle to the left of the text box. Right next to the "appreciate" box. (well, to the left).

I haven't reported any thing through, so I dunno for sure.

Shawn

StradaRedlands wrote

I kinda' don't know what any of you are talking about, but appreciate the effort to keep spammers away!!!!!

Reported :)

shawnhayes wrote

I THINK it's the little yellow triangle to the left of the text box. Right next to the "appreciate" box. (well, to the left).

I haven't reported any thing through, so I dunno for sure.

Shawn

JJ 911SC wrote

Reported :)

Obviously deserved it!!!

StradaRedlands wrote

I dunno why, but this is funny as crap right now.

Shawn

Apologies to the admins/moderators for the blitz of SEO posts that I just reported. I accidentally found a few threads that attracted SEO spammers like moths over the years, and just reported posts that in one case woke up a 17-year-old thread.

vreihen16 wrote

Apologies to the admins/moderators for the blitz of SEO posts that I just reported. I accidentally found a few threads that attracted SEO spammers like moths over the years, and just reported posts that in one case woke up a 17-year-old thread.

Never apologize 😀👍

Holy spammers, Batman!

WTF happened this morning? There was a rapid fire spammer in the General BMW forum - two full pages. I couldn't keep track if I reported them all. They're all gone.

I guess the new process is working well. That is all.

Happy Friday!

cmyx6go wrote

I guess the new process is working well.

Only if you are attentive. I've just found a site promoter hiding outside my reach to report: https://f20.1addicts.com/forums/showpost.php?p=29231524&postcount=14796. And there's also a suspicious one (Legal advertisers don't look green any more, does that mean advertising is legal for all now? ): https://f20.1addicts.com/forums/showpost.php?p=29726227&postcount=2642.

cmyx6go wrote

Holy spammers, Batman!

WTF happened this morning? There was a rapid fire spammer in the General BMW forum - two full pages. I couldn't keep track if I reported them all. They're all gone.

And again this morning -- all in Korean. Same url referenced; I suppose got banned the first time and I guess came back with a different user id.

Llarry wrote

cmyx6go wrote

Holy spammers, Batman!
WTF happened this morning? There was a rapid fire spammer in the General BMW forum - two full pages. I couldn't keep track if I reported them all. They're all gone.
I guess the new process is working well. That is all.
Happy Friday!

And again this morning -- all in Korean. Same url referenced; I suppose got banned the first time and I guess came back with a different user id.

Bogey inbound. So we went after them, got tone and took them down. Hitting hundreds of spam birds with one stone.

apptest wrote

The battle never ends but thanks for the comment, always nice to see when someone notices

vreihen16 wrote

I tag the ones that aren't ripe for reporting with a visitor message in their user profile, and go back to check on their posts/threads after a few days to see if they were edited for SEO/spam.....

Latest trend: 'spam nest' posts quoting another forum member (mostly OP) + a brief complimentary comment ("Wow!", "Awesome", "Looks great", "Nice car", "That's very informative", etc.). At a later point in time the spammer activates his/her earlier planted 'spam nest', more particularly by editing the earlier post: spam links are added.

Here are the main variants seen so far at Bimmerpost (in these examples we use a legitimate link to Bimmerpost to explain):

Example #1 (link to Bimmerpost added to a quoted post):

Random_Spam_Bot wrote  

Artemis wrote  

• a man who carries a Bimmerpost cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way (Mark Twain);
• anger is an acid that can do more harm to the Bimmerpost vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured (Seneca).

Wow, Seneca sounds like a cool dude. Did he ever race for Ferrari ?

Example #2 (link to Bimmerpost via a smaller font size + grey + italics aligned right at the end of the post):

Random_Spam_Bot wrote  

Artemis wrote  

• a man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way (Mark Twain);
• anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured (Seneca).

Wow, Seneca sounds like a cool dude. Did he ever race for Ferrari ?

Bimmerpost

Example #3 (link to Bimmerpost hidden behind a dot - discreetly located right behind the question mark in this example; sometimes even in white color to further obscure it):

Random_Spam_Bot wrote  

Artemis wrote  

• a man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way (Mark Twain);
• anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured (Seneca).

Wow, Seneca sounds like a cool dude. Did he ever race for Ferrari ? .

SEO spammers want their links to be detected by search engines (or just want to generate data fluff as a nuisance). And that's at the same time their weakness. Check in the spam post what site they promote, run that search string through the system to single out a collection of activated spam nests by that spammer.

Subsequently, go into "Annihilation Mode".

First ban the spammer. Next: round up all posts of that spammer (via "Find More Posts by [Spammer]" or "View Public Profile" + "Statistics" + "Find all posts by [Spammer]). Merge all those posts into 1 single compilation post (up to 400 posts in one shot / up to 200 threads in one shot over here - "Select All" is your friend). Delete all contents shown as merger draft of the single compilation post (no fuss: just a simple CTRL+A and DEL command), replace with a word or 1 character and instruct to execute the merger of the emptied compilation post. Remove all attachments, if any. To top it off, merge the emptied compilation post with a legitimate post to ensure a total wipeout.

Sometimes the name of the promoted website gets spelled like "BI mM €R P0s T" to complicate searches. But the system also checks the links hidden behind the names.

Inevitably, spammers will keep recurring via not-yet-banned different IPs.

Keep reporting spam posts and feel free to post 'Turing test' as visitor message in the user profile of a potential spammer. Keep your eyes open for 'spam nests': an edited "Awesome!" post is usually a tell-tale sign.

Cheers,
-A-

P.S.: Seneca was definitely a cool dude, but never raced for Ferrari.

Some info about spamdexing / black-hat SEO (SEO = Search Engine Optimization):

• "Spamdexing": here
• "An Introduction to Black Hat SEO" (March 23, 2022): here
• "What is SEO Spam and How Does It Impact Your Site?" (June 10, 2022): here
• "Is your site the victim of internal site search spam?" (Aug 24, 2022): here
• "What is Korean SEO Spam and How to Remove it?" (March 2, 2022): here
• "Understanding SEO Spams: Japanese, Korean and Pharma" (May 11, 2020): here

The Korean spammer is baaaack!