GREAT! looks like we got us a spammer!

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Looks like alex might turn on the capchias on this one. Let all call there number and cuss the s**t out of them. also, lets scream on the phone as loud as possable and let make them know that you don't spam Wrong planet!!

I have replied to a few of his threads saying "Wrong planet doesn't tolerate blasted spammers!"
Didn't work.

I can't find a "report" button. All the mods must be off somewhere

too bad the number was international. I was gonna call them via google voice and cuss the f**ing $h!t out of them.

If Fnord were here to see this...

I haven't seen Fnord around here in a while. Hopefully he comes back in time to give this stupid spammer what for. It's a little interesting, sort of like a virus in the organism that is WP, or an infestation of insects in our home.

Hey, at least it's funny spam.

Replying to the threads won't do anything, since your replies almost certainly won't be read by the spammer. Just have to wait for the mods to clean-up the threads... and him.

Blasted spammer just got a new username - puneetsagar!

Blasted!

I wonder - could this have something to do with the whole "Heartbleed" fiasco?

So I don't triple post, someone else report the spammer to the moderator attention thread.

I've been in administrative and moderatorial roles at various sites since the 1990s.

When there are spammers, it's best not to post about it, and to not post in the spammers' topics. That makes it more difficult to identify which topics are spam and which are real topics. I don't even recommend posting a topic to talk about the spam, because the moderators probably don't want to leave any evidence that a spammer was here.

The best thing to do is to contact administrators and moderators so that they can remove the posts and the accounts, and to otherwise ignore the spam as if it wasn't here.

Many spammers actually aren't people, and are instead just computer programs that go out searching for sites that are running specific vulnerable forum software. Responding to them won't have any positive effect. Older software is more likely to be vulnerable. Unpatched software is more likely to be vulnerable. Heavily modified software is less likely to be patched completely and is more likely to be vulnerable. WrongPlanet uses phpbb version 2 with lots of modifications, and phpbb version 2 hasn't been updated since 2008, so it's very vulnerable. Some things could be done to try to at least make it so the site doesn't appear to be running phpbb version 2, but it doesn't seem like that will happen.

Last edited by matt on 12 Apr 2014, 2:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wouldn't implementing a system where you can only post once in say two or three minutes a better solution than the that captcha crap? I don't know if it's the ASD thing or what, but I can never figure those things out and it takes me at least several tries before I get it. I hope they don't implement that captcha thing.

(Thread moved from GAD to wp.net discussion)

I whacked both spammers as soon as I logged on, they'd certainly made a mess, each had quite the post count of spam. We seem to be having a mini plague of spammers based in India at the moment. There were another couple of spammers too who hadn't posted, I whacked them too. It is just one of those things we have to put up with; their longevity on the site is very limited, as soon as Cornflake or me logs in it is curtains for them.

^ This. When the spammers are as prolific with their spam posts as today (there must have been nearly 100 spam posts), all we do is nuke their accounts. We simply tick a box next to their username and hit the submit button and their account along with all their posts and PMs are instantly deleted from the database. Whether they've made one spam post or a thousand, they are all gone in the blink of an eye.

A good job well done, thanks for all your work.

Arriving fashionably late to the party...

To avoid reports of spam or other issues becoming scattered, please only post them to this thread:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt237032.html

ETA: Please don't respond to spammers - when their posts are wiped, all the responses remain and still require removing manually.