SPAM Problems?
DaltonSpence
Mapmaker
in Site Matters
It seems like every week I have to flag a couple of posts as SPAM. Are you having a SPAM-bot problem?
Comments
I have the same experience, and also flog them as spam - like 2 now on the list
I won't call it a big problem, as most of it is taken care of quite quickly, but it has been a bit of an increase in spam lately.
One of the problems is that most of those aren't actually bots, but actual people in poorer countries who work cheaply, and it is very difficult to prevent live humans who can read from creating an account, log in, and post something, without also making it an unpleasant experience for new users, something which is very important to me not to do.
There are rate limits in place for how often people can post, which is quite effective in preventing them from filling the forum front page with spam, you may have noticed it is always just two posts. Back in the old days, spam didn't happen quite as often, but several times I had to clean out a spam-attack of 20+ posts filling the entire first page.
I often wonder why these people do this? Does anyone ever fall for their scams or buy whatever they're pushing? Facebook is just flooded with these annoying people (and bots) and they just change their names and keep coming back.
Every once in a while, someone does. Which is the whole problem. Spam is an industry because it works. How it works differ a bit, sometimes the intention is to get people to click a link (which can lead to a legitimate product, a scam, or even malware), other times they just want the links out there because it boosts their search engine ratings which means people searching for this stuff will get the spammy sites high up in the search rankings instead of the legitimate ones. In the latter case, it is not the people that see the spam that is the actual targets.
Best thing to do with Spam of course is slice and fry it; if only it was so simple to handle the computer version and those who post it 😁🍳
More of a corned beef or jellied veal-man, myself. But I would not turn down spam with some mimosa/cocktail berries in mayo. With about a litre of G&T on the side.