Spam Message in Message Box

19 Apr 2020

Hi

I got a Spam Message in my Message Box (April 18 2020), this has never happened on here before, no name from a sender at all. Hacked site?

Lixa

Subject - Need a few help

I wont post the message as it would perpetuate the spam.

19 Apr 2020

Yes, it's happened before. Don't click and delete.

19 Apr 2020

Quote by Lixa
Hi

I got a Spam Message in my Message Box (April 18 2020), this has never happened on here before, no name from a sender at all. Hacked site?

Lixa

Subject - Need a few help

I wont post the message as it would perpetuate the spam.

Hiya Lixa,

If there's no sender, they've been deleted already. Likely either someone else has reported it, or the admins have noticed spam activity and gone on a nuking spree violent3

You can report messages straight to the contact desk by clicking the button inside the message.

Thanks for reporting it and keep up the good work. Big Hugs

19 Apr 2020

Quote by Lixa
Hi

I got a Spam Message in my Message Box (April 18 2020), this has never happened on here before, no name from a sender at all. Hacked site?

Lixa

Subject - Need a few help

I wont post the message as it would perpetuate the spam.

You can always take a screenshot to let us now how it looks.
That's always helpful.

19 Apr 2020

It seems a Russian hacker / spammer decided to write a bot to automatically creates accounts here, which can beat the "Captcha" bot (supposed) protection.

They have used yahoo.com as their email provider and created hundreds of accounts there too, so they know what they are doing, or have spent an awfully long time creating so many email addresses (which will be automatically whitelisted).

We have deleted hundreds of accounts in the last week and are putting new measures in place to try and combat the problem.

Apologies for any inconvenience. We are doing our best to stamp it out.

19 Apr 2020

I have spam blocking capability on the forum I run. It automatically rejects registrations from IPs or emails that are known spam sources (using multiple blacklists) and sends borderline ones to a queue for admin approval. I've been seeing a pretty steady wave recently, both in automatic rejections and in ones that come to me for manual review. And we are tiny and largely invisible. I hate to think what a board of this size must get hit with. Good work on the part of the team that we get as little spam here as we do.

19 Apr 2020

The best databases have limits on the number of connections per site, per day, making it impossible for larger sites like Lush to take advantage of them. Of course, if big sites like Lush could link up to them, that would push the spammers to find more effective ways to circumvent them, thus eventually negating their usefulness.

Small sites can effectively stop most spammers from the get-go, and quickly deal with anything that slips through. I get around 18-20 blocked registrations per day on my backwater site. In March, that was up by about 25%. I've already hit my average for the month, so I'll probably be up by 25% or more by the end of April. That unfortunately gives a lot of people an optimistic picture of what everyone should be able to do when it comes to blocking spam. They don't understand that many of the methods and tools smaller sites take advantage of simply aren't possible or affordable for sites with real traffic.

It takes an inside view like we have to pick up on that.

Quote by seeker4
I have spam blocking capability on the forum I run. It automatically rejects registrations from IPs or emails that are known spam sources (using multiple blacklists) and sends borderline ones to a queue for admin approval. I've been seeing a pretty steady wave recently, both in automatic rejections and in ones that come to me for manual review. And we are tiny and largely invisible. I hate to think what a board of this size must get hit with. Good work on the part of the team that we get as little spam here as we do.

Good Will ---|--- Three Alarm <= Both almost famous, give them a read and get them one step closer!