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Post by Verbivore on Jul 22, 2020 4:12:12 GMT
Can I just interject to say I'm not sure we've gone off-topic enough to satisfy Alex. Well, apart for the random spam post. The latest of which has just now been deleted. I was expecting a flood of spam posts during COVID lockdown, but it went inexplicably quiet. Instead of my finding 3–5+ spams weekly, those declined to none for some weeks. Perhaps the pests are waking up now from their state-induced dormancy. Is there a New Normal? Spammers have usually targeted old, retired posts, so are not hard to spot. This current thread is a good example: at least half the dud posts I've removed this year have landed here. It's an old pattern, with the target thread evolving over time.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 22, 2020 10:42:10 GMT
I have picked up on some of the spams before you have deleted them, probably because of the time difference between Oz and the UK. The odd thing is that most seem absolutely pointless. Advertisements, although irritating, I can understand but others are baffling.
Thank you for your work in cleaning up the rubbish.
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Post by Trevor on Jul 22, 2020 12:04:05 GMT
Spammers have usually targeted old, retired posts, so are not hard to spot. This current thread is a good example... Oops. I didn't even notice this was an old thread.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 22, 2020 14:07:58 GMT
I have picked up on some of the spams before you have deleted them, probably because of the time difference between Oz and the UK. The odd thing is that most seem absolutely pointless. Advertisements, although irritating, I can understand but others are baffling. Thank you for your work in cleaning up the rubbish. And you, LJH, for your contributions. And Alan P; and Dave (US) must still catch some, too, out of sync with our time zones. As this NtAPS board has relaxed into its current pace the spamming has remained relatively persistent – if erratically so. (Trolling, OTOH, has completely ceased: a great mercy when one recalls the Kaneshiro era, and its predecessors on the old APS board.) Spam can fluctuate seasonally (school holidays; emergencies and lockdowns, etc.), but most I find here either are pushing viagras or written in Russian; it's been a while since the offers of lusty Russian brides, though. LOL I would be surprised if it weren't largely bot-generated and posted, with some algorithm seeking out retired threads where they might creep in and not be noticed. (Fat hope of that here, eh, Folks :-)It can hardly be worthwhile to any individual to so waste her / his / their … [pronoun of choice blah blah …] time doing it manually. And bots are probably immune to 2019-SARS-CoV-2. Spam here is a minor bother, but bearable. There are other matters testing our sanity just now. ;-) Be well.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 22, 2020 14:16:15 GMT
Okay, I ended up at the very beginning of this thread (12 years ago!): Alex Knibb's guest post Should 'police' have a capital letter?, where I was amused to read Alex's parenthetical observation on this board: "I must also say that your collective ability to go off topic is breathtaking".
Nice to see little has changed in that regards. LOL
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Post by Dave on Jul 23, 2020 22:11:48 GMT
I don't visit the forum as often as I used to, but when I do, I haven't seen much spam--Verbivore has most likely already taken care of it!
But the ones I've seen/deleted usually have registered to be members and logged in--can a bot do all that? Does Pro Boards have a Captcha system in place for that kind of stuff?
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 1, 2020 13:15:10 GMT
Spammers are getting visual. I've just now deleted a 16-minute-old post comprising a large photo of blokes with a big fish in hand(s) and a caption in strange alphabet (none I recognise, but more Cyrillic-looking than Latin or Greek). There had to be something fishy about that post. Ahem.
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Post by Twoddle on Aug 2, 2020 9:43:08 GMT
I've read about those fishing e-mails.
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