Onslaught of spammers?
 

Seems like since John made the last "update" resulting in the new GC homepage, we've been hit by an onslaught of spammers. There have always been some spammers, but it's getting ridiculous now. My inbox is filling up with new post notifications to threads that I am subscribing to, but it's mostly spammers. Looking at the new new homepage, most of the "newly updated" threads are just bumped by spammers.

I'm sure it's keeping the mods and supermods busy with all of the deleting and banning.

Since John rarely responds to PMs, I thought I'd post this here and perhaps some of the mods could pass it on in the mod's forum..

I think it's more a coincidence than anything else. I can tell you that this was happening prior to the changes -- we usually do catch it fairly quickly though. I think the new front page does inadvertently give spammers more views than they would ordinarily get. We are still getting rid of them though. I don't know what else can really be done besides blocking IPs from certain countries.

The spammers drive me crazy on GC & other sites. Well, not quite crazy - but they are a real pain to deal with when it's non stop. Most trouble seems to originate from automated spam bots. Over time, the bots have been getting much better at what they do. I'm actually surprised that GC hasn't been hammered much worse than this considering how many people are using & viewing the site. I've seen another site nearly wrecked by spam bots & that site is nowhere near the size of GC. I suspect that it may have been just as bad on GC if it were not for all the mods being so vigilant against spammers.

Anyhow, I have something in the works which should result in a very significant reduction in spam on GC. It will add a tiny inconvenience to new site members, but other than that I expect it to stop most spam bots and make it easier to spot & get rid of the others. I'll see about getting this change made within the next few days.

^^^ CAPTCHA code on registration?

I've seen those "To make sure you're a live body..." thingamabobs where you need to add 8+5=13.

Just like to say . . . ALL HAIL THE GREAT JOHN

Yea, they're kind of annoying, but they definitely help keep automated registrations down.

I dunno, there are live body that can't add simple mathematics. hehehe

Maybe it's just me, but I haven't seen a significant increase in spammers since the homepage change.

^^^ I've been noticing them a lot more since the update. There were five or six that were almost conversing with each other a few days ago.

Is that just because you can see them on the homepage now?

I don't know, but it seems like there have been more spammers over the past year or two, not necessarily over the past week.

No, I never go to the main page.

They used to pop up every few days. Now, I'm seeing multiple screen names coming on every day.

Though I've noticed them on the homepage a lot more, my inbox fills up with spammers' posts for the threads I'm subscribed to. There's a lot more than there used to be. Getting their spam in my email is more annoying than overlooking them here.

GC already uses CAPTCHA with registrations, but I don't have it set to max difficulty because it can sometimes be too difficult for legitimate new members who are registering as well.

That's definitely another option we might consider at some point.