Rob Williams
03-15-2008, 03:32 AM
Hi all,
On March 14th, we had a user join the forums and spam about 30 visitors via private message. Once I noticed what was going on, I banned the user. For some reason, it's customary for bots (or spammers in general) to sign up one day, then come back a few days later to perform the spamming. Why this is the case, I have no idea, but that's what happened here.
Regardless, I have created a new rule that will disallow users with >10 posts to private message users, which should prevent this from happening again in the future. Most spammers will not have the determination to make ten quality posts in order to spam this way, and if they choose to spam post to get their 10, it will likely be noticed by a moderator prior to them having time to spam via PM.
Once a user has ten posts, it might take up to an hour before the private messaging system becomes available, as the batch job runs once per hour. If spam via PM happens in the future, we might consider increasing the 10 post limit.
Just a heads-up to new visitors!
On March 14th, we had a user join the forums and spam about 30 visitors via private message. Once I noticed what was going on, I banned the user. For some reason, it's customary for bots (or spammers in general) to sign up one day, then come back a few days later to perform the spamming. Why this is the case, I have no idea, but that's what happened here.
Regardless, I have created a new rule that will disallow users with >10 posts to private message users, which should prevent this from happening again in the future. Most spammers will not have the determination to make ten quality posts in order to spam this way, and if they choose to spam post to get their 10, it will likely be noticed by a moderator prior to them having time to spam via PM.
Once a user has ten posts, it might take up to an hour before the private messaging system becomes available, as the batch job runs once per hour. If spam via PM happens in the future, we might consider increasing the 10 post limit.
Just a heads-up to new visitors!