Idiot postings

[Nigel]

There seems to have been a spate of idiots posting heiroglyphics with dubious-looking links.They are destroying the usefulness of the forums - I log in 2 or 3 times a day to see if there's anything of interest & on the remote offchance I can actually help someone. If I have to wade through all this graffiti to get to the real posts I shan't bother for much longer.

Is there any way of stopping them ? I can understand the reluctance to disable guest posters, but perhaps guest posting can be limited to a "Newbie" forum and have the rest for registered users only ?

Are they all coming from the same group of IP addresses ? If so, it might be worth blocking postings from that range for a week, with a prominent notice on the front page saying which ranges are blocked (and if any genuine users are affected they can complain to their ISP & try to get the idiots thrown off).

And to the person or people who are posting this spam :
You are not clever, you are not funny. Nobody is stupid enough to follow your links, which doubtless lead to Windows viruses, spyware & adware. All you are doing is wrecking a valuable resource for other people. Go away and get a life.

[towy71]

I wish desparately that whoever would go away too! It really is just stupid and boring

what is the saying? little things.....

[Flea]

Can the IP's of the offending people be logged? I mean the exact IP and not a range and if so can we not email abuse@theirisp.com ?

I'm sure there will be a clause in their agreement that can have them immediately disconnected for such behaviour, there is in mine.

[nelz]

Admins can view the IP from which any message is posted. that's why I've been deleting the content of the messages, rather than the messages themselves, so the IP information is still there.

I wouldn't rely too much on ISPs taking action though, while most UK ISPs are pretty hot on this sort of thing, the rash of abuse today came from an address belonging to a Chinese ISP.

Even if the forum doesn't provide IP filtering capabilities, it would always be possible to block all access from that ISP with IPtables.

[fingers99]

Even if the forum doesn't provide IP filtering capabilities, it would always be possible to block all access from that ISP with IPtables.

And maybe notify the ISP that you'd done so? My guess is that this is happening to a few forums.

[nelz]

The ISP is in China, I doubt they could care less.

[smita034]

They dont't care out there, I have had to report China IP's for trying to bruteforce my SSH. I'm positive there is a PostNuke Mod out there that allows you to ban IP's on the site...

[Nigel]

I see Mr fgfgfg is back again today... anybody know the Chinese for "Bog Off" ?

[smita034]

沼澤 in trad
沼泽in simple
(thats if you trust BabelFish lol

[Nigel]

Many thanks - let's hope he reads this

[Nigel]

I see we've had another attack of chinese graffiti in the small hours of the morning...

Whatever countermeasures are in place obviously aren't working. I think it is time to stop unregistered users from posting in ANY of the forums. MacFormat do this, and it doesn't seem to hurt their genuine traffic.

[skecs]

I reluctantly have to agree with Nigel - a notification message on why users have to become members for FREE! would hopefully not discourage new users from joining and asking questions. Browse for old answers and threads but to ask questions join the community. It's either that or total domain blocking of IPs that don't respond to requests to "name full details and block user accounts that spam and post unacceptable material" - the Chinese government wants to block access that corrupts their citizens (in their words) so report these details to the Chinese embassy. I'm sure that would cause some concern in China!

[M-Saunders]

I see we've had another attack of chinese graffiti in the small hours of the morning...

Whatever countermeasures are in place obviously aren't working.

Right now I'm looking into this and fathoming out a lot of stuff, so hopefully there won't be so much in the near future. Fingers and toes crossed!

M

[Nigel]

If you do figure out how to stop it, it would make a good article for a future edition of LXF...