Saboteurs
 

I have noticed new members that crop up who are just playing pranks on their posts with advertisements for shoes and the links have malwares in it (my antivirus tells me that a trojan was blocked)
Theres one that got blocked right away as he was posting pictures of girls in thongs...very smart of that forum staff to have detected it right away.
Now I am wary at welcoming new members or answering on their posts for fear of being compromised.

This was happening a few months back, and just recently I noticed it starting back up again. Marty had disabled a lot of things looking for the reason why they were coming to the sight. Honestly, it's no where near as bad as it was previously, yet... I'm sure Marty must have turned something else on and is waiting to see what will happen and that he is aware of the situation.

Hi Bud,

The best thing to do if you find anything suspicious like that is report it to the moderators. There are two buttons at the top right of every post. One is a warning triangle and the other is like a red & yellow card. Either of them will report the post to the moderators.

As far as Trojans go, the best thing is to keep your virus checker fully up to date for all internet browsing. Posting will not make you any more susceptible if there is a problem on a page so if the post seems genuine don't worry about answering it.

Don't click on any suspicious links though, as that is the main way your system could be compromised, by going on to a link that triggers something like that.

If the post is suspicious though, with advertising or strange wording and links to other sites, then it's best just to report it and the moderators will come along and remove it (assuming we agree it's suspicious).

Thank You, Paul...Thank You, Rosie....for the heads-up
That is good to know

Thank you Rosie for the clear explanation. These posts annoy me too, but I think there are some desperately bored people out there who have nothing better to do. I sometimes wonder if they actually know what an orchid is.

Saboteurs
 

Heavens, they don't need or want to know what an orchid is. All they care about is getting their spam out there and finding victims. :((
Beverly A.

The spam has been better since the summer.

I find myself only opening attachments that belong to the 'usual group' of people. I tend to stay away from the 'newbies' for now.

I clicked on that link that turned out to be a porno spammer without thinking ! It pi**ed me off and I just laid into he/she/it & INSTANTLY reported AND gave it an infraction while telling the poster that we don't tolerate spammers and that he/she/it would be banned from further access ! The sooner we can jump on them and notify the admins = the sooner they are erased !

Don't waste your time sending messages to the spammers, because I'd say over half are computer bots, not true people. It will do no good. And if they are real people, you may make them want to continue because they were acknowledged. Just a thought. That's how my work handles spammers on our blogs and websites.

I tend to agree, I prefer not to even acknowledge them, just report them (and since I've been a moderator just delete and ban them).

The other problem with posting a response is that it will look very odd when it's still there after the original post was deleted. Generally the moderators don't see the threads we are deleting spam from, and so don't see if there are responses to the spam that also need removing so they get left behind. It is better if all trace the spam ever existed is removed.

(Moderators have an option to ban a user and delete all their messages in one go, rather than one at a time. This means we might see one of them to agree it's a spammer but not all of the users messages and so don't see if there is any response).

If you do respond, don't ever quote the spammers message. If you do that it's likely their spam will stay even when we think it's deleted because it is still there in another user's quote of it.

Anyway, thanks to all those who do keep reporting spam. I've not been around much to clear it up but Sonya and Camille are doing a great job, backed up by Dave and Tindomul. Great job guys :Tup: