Spam from THN users?

E

eMP3Danie

Guest
Serendipity,

I just received an email from this fellow @THN and I just think its pure spam... not the meaty kind though,

Anyhow. hes is advertising Chinese Medicine and Hosting services to your registered users on here I think. Just a heads up
 
Wol

Wol

In Cryo Sleep
Re: Serendipity,

ooo hosting services. I'm looking for a webhost at the moment *-) Wonder if he can do me a good offer.... hmm. Although I'm not personally too keen on chinese medicine. I prefer my medicine to be a bit less...... dubious!

However, I would point out the "Can't find anywhere else to post? Feel free right here (but do try to find a more suitable place! :) )." message at the top of this page. I'm guessing since you put it in "the chat box" and not the "Hey Admins" section for reporting things wrong with the forum, that you want us to chat about this matter, in which case I feel you should at least quote the message he sent you ;-)

:-D
 
Haven

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
Re: Serendipity,

Yuk, ignore the below. Looks like someone has scripted an automated PM via the web forms. Will look into the permissions and see what we can do.

Hi,

Can you drop me the mail headers in a PM and I'll take a look - without the headers I cant see the origin server - its probably just someone masquerading as us but I'll need to look to be sure.

Ta muchly

Haven
 
Haven

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
I've banned the user for now - looks like we need to lock down the PM feature to prevent this again.
 
Ronin Storm

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
The PM feature is already somewhat locked down. Was the user activated before they were banned? If not then that'd be a hole; if so, then it may be an old spam account that made it under the bar before we introduced StopForumSpam. I've been seeing a bunch of stuff from Black Cat Games' forum over the past week so there's a bit of a spate of attacks going on but I assumed that as I hadn't received anything here that we'd managed to keep them out.
 
E

eMP3Danie

Guest
Re: Serendipity,

thats what the guy mentioned in the pm

Hey,
I'm new here, how's it going?

"The most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently" - Pema Chodron

---
Serendipity
http://serendipity.x10hosting.com
 
Ronin Storm

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
Re: Serendipity,

[mod]Merged with thread in Hey Admins to consolidate discussion.[/mod]
 
Ronin Storm

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
Re: Serendipity,

I've had a quick check and it looks like the user burnt his PM allowance spamming as many as possible, which means he must have been a full registered user. Looks like he wasn't in the StopForumSpam database, but he is now.

I'll purge all the spam PMs now, having completed that investigation.
 
SwampFae

SwampFae

Super Moderator
Staff member
Re: Serendipity,

eMP3Danie said:
thats what the guy mentioned in the pm

Hey,
I'm new here, how's it going?

"The most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently" - Pema Chodron

---
Serendipity
http://serendipity.x10hosting.com
Click to expand...

Hi'a, folks.
Scary solstice and a creepy new year to all.

Aliella also got some weird PM like that(think it was yesterday) from this person.
Thought it a little bit odd. So thought I would drop by now to check here.
Seems these spammers are not content with grabbing and using e-mails anymore.
>_<
 
Ronin Storm

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
Re: Serendipity,

SwampFae said:
Seems these spammers are not content with grabbing and using e-mails anymore.
Click to expand...

We keep most of them out by checking their email/IP/etc against a database of known spammers but inevitably some get through from time to time. Unfortunately, this one made it to registered user status so they had a fair few PMs to play with... :/

Sorted now, though. Thanks for the reports.
 
BiG D

BiG D

Administrator
Staff member
Just a note for everyone: you can report a PM to the mod team the same way you report a post. There's an icon in the top right, just hit that and fill in a reason and someone will deal with it :)
 
Ashya

Ashya

Active Member
Isn't there a "you need to post X messages on the forum before you can post PMs"-function in the settings? I know phpBB3 has. But then again, that's proper forum software...

*runs and hides from the Admins of Doom to avoid their wrath.*
 
BiG D

BiG D

Administrator
Staff member
I dunno. I probably could've used some more underlines.

To answer the original question, yes there are plenty of ways to limit PM usage for new users. The problem is that there are also plenty of reasons for a new user to need to send a PM, so removing that ability is a rather crappy solution.
 
Ronin Storm

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
Ashya said:
Isn't there a [...snip...]function in the settings?
Click to expand...

Not natively.

But, then again, that sort of option is only really useful when one has thousands of users and hundreds of active visitors every day where the proportion of users who can spam leads to much higher abuse counts than places such as THN. One spam PM every month or so I reckon we can handle manually.

Rule-based moderation has problems for eclectic communities in that it forgets that the members are individuals. It's why we do direct assistance and enforcement and don't just leave it to the board software to do it for us.
 
SwampFae

SwampFae

Super Moderator
Staff member
Only one thing to say when it comes to this thread and the comments within:

attachment.php


;)​

(I know I might not be so popular for posting a pic in here. But let's face it. This thread is epic -and- legendary :P )
(Also: This was the smallest size I could find of it*giggles*)
 
KillCrazy

KillCrazy

Active Member
BiG D said:
I dunno. I probably could've used some more underlines.

To answer the original question, yes there are plenty of ways to limit PM usage for new users. The problem is that there are also plenty of reasons for a new user to need to send a PM, so removing that ability is a rather crappy solution.
Click to expand...

Are you actually a proper mentaly unstable freak?
 
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