Derek Uzzell Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 I’ve just deleted all the spam postings in the “Walking Talk” forum that were added recently. I performed a forum SEARCH with “live stream” in the Keywords box and selected All posts as the Date Limit. Due to the way that SEARCH operates this is not an ideal way to specifically identify the spam that’s currently being posted, but I think everything spammy is now gone (including a few older spam postings that somehow managed to slip through the net). Took me about 10 minutes to delete about 30 postings. I don’t see what relevance the email address provided by someone registering on the O&AL forums has to the spamming that’s now taking place. The forum registration procedure demands only that a not-already-used username and a valid email address be provided, but the email address is not employed subsequently within a member’s forum participation. I (like many other people) have several email addresses (including Gmail ones) and I use them selectively. It might well be argued that having a Gmail address has privacy implications, but providing a Gmail/hotmail address when registering on the O&AL forums will not indicate that the person registering is a potential spammer, nor will having an unusual email address ISP-wise. It might be educational to know what email address(es) have been/are being used with the usernames that the spammers have registered under, but even if it were established that only a limited number of email addresses were/are being provided at the registration stage, or a particular ‘funny’ ISP could be identified, I believe that the present forum software wiould still not allow Warners staff to exploit that information to stop the spamming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 Derek Uzzell - 2016-09-20 9:08 AM Having worked for 26 years at GCHQ in the IT field I suppose I could be categorised as a “computer expert” (albeit a long-retired and well out of date one!) Ooooh......interesting....but i'm going totally off thread topic now! What year period were you there? The only reason i'm asking is if you ever knew Geoffrey Prime? He was born very near to my locality and when his 'case' came to light, i was very fascinated and followed it throughout (i've always had an interest in Cold War history and espionage). Fast forward 24 years, in casual conversation with my neighbour friend over a meal when talking about my interest (i'd been telling her about the work of Bletchley Park where i've visited a few times), and she asked if i'd heard of Geoffrey Prime. Imagine the stunned look on my face when she told me he is her uncle! Here is the wiki page about it; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Prime Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 Bulletguy - 2016-09-20 1:49 PM Derek Uzzell - 2016-09-20 9:08 AM Having worked for 26 years at GCHQ in the IT field I suppose I could be categorised as a “computer expert” (albeit a long-retired and well out of date one!) Ooooh......interesting....but i'm going totally off thread topic now! What year period were you there? The only reason i'm asking is if you ever knew Geoffrey Prime?... I worked at GCHQ from 1970 to 1996 and (according to Wikipedia) Prime left the organisation in 1977. It’s very unlikely that our paths crossed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 Derek Uzzell - 2016-09-20 2:14 PM I worked at GCHQ from 1970 to 1996 and (according to Wikipedia) Prime left the organisation in 1977. It’s very unlikely that our paths crossed. Big place even back then. I imagine it possibly had more staff then than it does today even though it's still big. It was a fascinating case. Prime got handed one of the longest sentences at 38 years, 35 of which were for his offences under the OSA. The senior Detective involved eventually wrote a book about it, "The Imperfect Spy" by D.J Cole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pelmetman Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 Derek Uzzell - 2016-09-20 2:14 PM I worked at GCHQ from 1970 to 1996 . Why am I not surprised :D ........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbo Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 I've always wondered whether the new circular GCHQ building was conceived to confuse the staff or guard against external infiltrators. It certainly confused the CAD operators working in our office, involved in the Civil Engineering design :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aandncaravan Posted September 21, 2016 Share Posted September 21, 2016 Bulletguy, you are right about Gmail and Google trawling email contents, but to counter that the Spam filter is exceptional. Every time I report Spam or mark an email as Spam, someone in New Zealand benefits as the Gmail database will block that from then on for all World users. For someone who might be vulnerable and succumb to some of the rubbish that gets sent out, that is a valuable service. For a business like ours with World wide websites that saves me a huge amount of time. Very rare for any Spam emails to make it to my Inbox, almost all of the rubbish gets trapped by the Spam filter. I get very irritated by the way Google goes through my email content, it's wrong, but the advantages of speed, space and probably the best Spam filter in the World (solely down to Gmail's size) I live with the disadvantages. Can I reiterate others thanks to all those who are giving a lot of their free time in keeping the Spam to a reasonable level. It is appreciated by all of us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted September 21, 2016 Share Posted September 21, 2016 aandncaravan Google is trying to take over the damn planet! At first it was a good clean simple unfussy browser but over time it's nibbled away every individuals privacy insisting on obtaining email addresses to link to certain sites, eg YouTube which i'd used "fuss free" for years....suddenly i couldn't access the clips i'd saved in YT favourites. To recover them i had to register the email account and "link" it via Google. I find it increasingly intrusive but Google is a multi billion dollar empire and will stop at nothing to crush any competition. It's behaving like a Dictatorship! I use Thunderbird for email and thats pretty good at sifting the crap out. I also started using Qwant as a browser which is pretty good. Does everything Google does without trying to take over your computer! https://www.qwant.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pelmetman Posted September 21, 2016 Share Posted September 21, 2016 Dammed if I can get my head around Google gmail *-) ........... I have a bt email account and a gmail, but for some reason gmail won't let me log into my gmail account :-S ........... But they do email my bt account to tell me they blocked me from accessing my gmail account :-( ..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogerThat Posted September 21, 2016 Share Posted September 21, 2016 I know I keep banging on about it, but setting the forums up to use reCAPTCHA will cut 99% of spam overnight :-| Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 It’s academic what someone’s email address is when they register on this forum. Many people have a ‘personal’ or ‘business-related’ email address (eg. duncan@warnersgroup.co.uk) so using email addresses as a means to identify potential spammers is just not going to work. It would be possible to specify within the registration process that only certain domains were acceptable (Virgin, TalkTalk, etc.) but that would be very restrictive and easy enough to side-step. Adding an appropriate CAPTCHA http://www.captcha.net/ to the forum registration process should (as RogerThat says) guard against ‘robotic’ registration, but it would not stop a human registering and then running automated software to add spam postings. It would be practicable to add a CAPTCHA at the posting stage as well as at the registration stage, but forum participants probably wouldn’t care for that. I don’t know how many people are involved in the forum spamming that’s being going on, nor what techniques are being used, nor what benefit the spammers get from posting this stuff to a minor UK ‘leisure-related’ set of forums when it should be plain that it’s unlikely to survive more than 12 hours. The crux of the matter, though, is that the owner (Warners) of these forums is evidently not in a position to modify in-house the software that runs the forums. Hopefully the company that created the original software will be familiar with anti-spam measures that can be implemented straightforwardly to provide protection in future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 Like the nuisance phone calls people get, many of those are computer generated but some are human. Just a pity nobody has bothered to chase down and catch a human spammer to ask what they are gaining. Is it money.....or just satisfaction from being a pain in the arse. Next question.......if the spam is generated by a robot.......whose controlling the robot? And no it won't be another robot!! All robots need human intervention at some point. Something else Duncan could discuss or look at. Why not outsource the work? Enable reliable and long standing members to wipe out spam crap. 99.9% of the time it appears late night. How often is the forum getting hit during the day? Very little if any i suspect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keithl Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 Bulletguy - 2016-09-22 2:35 PM Enable reliable and long standing members to wipe out spam crap. 99.9% of the time it appears late night. How often is the forum getting hit during the day? Very little if any i suspect. BG, There are already a few of us long standing forum members with the power to delete spam postings. Most days I delete around 40 posts, on a bad day I have deleted in excess of 200! And to answer your second question, most appear at night but there are still a lot posted during the day. I don't think robots ever sleep! Keith. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tracker Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 Bulletguy - 2016-09-22 2:35 PM How often is the forum getting hit during the day? Very little if any i suspect. You obviously were not here over the last weekend when a continuois tirade of crud almost filled the first page of postings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 Keithl - 2016-09-22 3:41 PM Bulletguy - 2016-09-22 2:35 PM Enable reliable and long standing members to wipe out spam crap. 99.9% of the time it appears late night. How often is the forum getting hit during the day? Very little if any i suspect. BG, There are already a few of us long standing forum members with the power to delete spam postings. Most days I delete around 40 posts, on a bad day I have deleted in excess of 200! And to answer your second question, most appear at night but there are still a lot posted during the day. I don't think robots ever sleep! Keith. Registering of established isp email addresses requiring mod approval is the way to go. No Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo. Carry on deleting Keith!! Looks like you will be in it for the long haul! Tracker - 2016-09-22 3:48 PM Bulletguy - 2016-09-22 2:35 PM How often is the forum getting hit during the day? Very little if any i suspect. You obviously were not here over the last weekend when a continuois tirade of crud almost filled the first page of postings. Well if there aim is to disrupt then daytime will certainly be better as this forum goes to bed pretty early.....even at weekends! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
747 Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 I bet it is a disgruntled ex member spamming the Forum. 8-) I can think of a few oddballs who have darkened the OAL doorstep. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted September 23, 2016 Share Posted September 23, 2016 747 - 2016-09-22 10:51 PM I bet it is a disgruntled ex member spamming the Forum. 8-) I can think of a few oddballs who have darkened the OAL doorstep. :D Yeah........one nutter threatened to sue me! *-) :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted September 23, 2016 Share Posted September 23, 2016 Quiet night tonight. Only three chunks of spam on at 1.24am. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted September 23, 2016 Share Posted September 23, 2016 Bulletguy Forum administrators (amateur or professional) are able to ‘see' a forum-user’s IP Address. This capability indicates that the present spamming is not originating in the UK but from the Far East (eg. Bangladesh). Such countries are around 5 hours ahead of UK time, which probably has some bearing on why most of the stuff appears on the O&AL forums in our early hours. As I said earlier, delay introduced at the O&AL forum registration stage by having a human ‘vet’ the information provided by the person registering will a) change the nature of the forum and b) impose a work-load on whoever is tasked to carry out the vetting. As far as vetting via email address or ISP is concerned, how is the vetter to decide whether an email address or ISP is ‘suspicious’ or not? What about people living abroad with a ‘foreign’ email address or ISP, or people who prefer not to provide their ‘personal’ email address merely to register on an on-line forum? Adopting a CAPTCHA approach avoids the labour-intensive human vetting process and should be the most effective deterrent, but whatever approach is taken Warners cannot make the software modifications themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted September 23, 2016 Share Posted September 23, 2016 See Duncan’s “Spam - tackled” posting at top of this webpage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted September 23, 2016 Share Posted September 23, 2016 Derek Uzzell - 2016-09-23 9:01 AM Bulletguy Forum administrators (amateur or professional) are able to ‘see' a forum-user’s IP Address. This capability indicates that the present spamming is not originating in the UK but from the Far East (eg. Bangladesh). Such countries are around 5 hours ahead of UK time, which probably has some bearing on why most of the stuff appears on the O&AL forums in our early hours. As I said earlier, delay introduced at the O&AL forum registration stage by having a human ‘vet’ the information provided by the person registering will a) change the nature of the forum and b) impose a work-load on whoever is tasked to carry out the vetting. As far as vetting via email address or ISP is concerned, how is the vetter to decide whether an email address or ISP is ‘suspicious’ or not? What about people living abroad with a ‘foreign’ email address or ISP, or people who prefer not to provide their ‘personal’ email address merely to register on an on-line forum? Adopting a CAPTCHA approach avoids the labour-intensive human vetting process and should be the most effective deterrent, but whatever approach is taken Warners cannot make the software modifications themselves. Yes i pretty much reckoned on the source. I used to have a massive problem with phone nuisance calls. Registering with TPS is a complete waste of time as it only logs UK calls....and even then only when they can be bothered. I looked at alternatives and the best i could come up with was caller ID display and as i'm with BT, initially it was free. Calls made from outside the UK display as "International", those inside the UK mostly display as "number witheld". Once i see either of those on my phone, i never answer it and let it go to ansaphone. If there is a remote chance the caller IS genuine then they start to leave a message at which point i will pick the phone up, but if it's a junk/nuisance call it cuts off and leaves no message. Within a couple of weeks the problem had virtually disappeared. Ok so thats phone and this concerns spamming a forum but both are the same really, just different applications. Both have the same disruptive intent. I would expect it's not too difficult to obtain listing of UK isp's. As for international ones, from personal experience.......my ex-wifes is xxx@dot ch. A couple of friends of mine, xxx@veteranen.nl and another xxx@dot de. No prizes for figuring where each live but my ex-wife is in Switzerland, Charlie lives in Nederland and Peter in Germany. What about Duncan or Warners talking with other forum mods and asking what they did to address the issue of spam? Which way did they go? This isn't the only forum to experience it and others must have been hit in the past. By the way, in ref to your opening line; "Forum administrators (amateur or professional) are able to ‘see' a forum-user’s IP Address." Including anyone using a VPN? Also.....and i'm not sure how true this is so it's not what i'm saying but BT told me by disconnecting or switching off your modem and re-starting it, it re-sets another IP address. That was someone from their 'tech dept'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletguy Posted September 23, 2016 Share Posted September 23, 2016 Derek Uzzell - 2016-09-23 2:10 PM See Duncan’s “Spam - tackled” posting at top of this webpage. Yeah looks like he missed this one which registered yesterday. He's gone home now apparently. http://forums.outandaboutlive.co.uk/forums/Motorhomes/Motorhome-Matters/their-systematics-is-contentious/44849/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted September 24, 2016 Share Posted September 24, 2016 Unfortunately the type of simple ‘tick box’ CAPTCHA added to the forum registration procedure has not stopped more of the live-streaming spam being posted to the O&AL forum last night by ‘brand new’ forum users who have just registered. While this approach may inhibit existing fully-robotic spamming software from successfully completing the OA&L’s forum registration procedure (until the spammers modify their software) it won’t stop a human spammer from registering manually and then running automated software to add multiple spam postings or just posting manually multiple times. I have moved the spam postings that were posted to the Motorhome Matters forum to the Admin Quarantine forum (which amateur administrators and Duncan have access to but not ‘ordinary’ forum members) as the spam was messing up Motorhome Matters’s usability quite badly and I wasn’t sure if Duncan would be handling the spamming over the weekend. I’ve left alone the other O&AL forums with recent spam in them (Warners Show News, Caravan Chat, Tent Talk, Chatterbox) as I’m not interested in them and there may be some value for Duncan if those spam entries remain in the forums to which they were originally posted. Can I ask forum members to not add comments (however profound or witty ;-) ) to spam postings. If the offending thread just consists of a single posting it’s simpler to handle. (I’ve copied this to Duncan’s “Spam - tackled 2” thread) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave C Posted September 25, 2016 Share Posted September 25, 2016 If you are waiting for a response from MMM then I guess you will wait a long time. I sent a message via their web site 4 or 5 months ago and I am still waiting! Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted September 25, 2016 Share Posted September 25, 2016 Dave What was your spam-related message to MMM about, please? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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