Invasion of the semi-literate Yorkshire spammers

[justin_willey]

Since the move we seem to have been invaded by a bunch of only partially literate spammers from the West Riding of Yorkshire trying to sell us their dubious services - they surely can't be registering manually - is there some hole in the registration system they are using?

[graeme_perrow · Accepted solution]

My guess is that there are scripts out there that know how to create user accounts and post questions on OSQA-based sites. Then they search the internet for OSQA sites and once they find one, they store it away someplace and then they can create random users and post spammy questions at their leisure. I'll look around for a way to thwart these scripts. It might be as simple as requiring a validated email address before allowing a user to ask questions.

It is odd, however, that we've seen more of these since moving to the sap.com domain (10 in the last week) than we ever did on sybase.com (a few in the last year).

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

Will these questions be deleted?

(I'm ready to flag and close these like today, but a complete delete would be better IMHO...)

[graeme_perrow · Accepted solution]

This is done.

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

Now, that was fast:)

[MarkCulp · Accepted solution]

FWIW: We delete them as quickly as we can... but sometimes we're not at our computers so it may take a few minutes before we get to it.

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

sometimes we're not at our computers

We'll accept that excuse:)

[former_SQLA_member1694886]

If it's any consolation, we're having the same problems on an OSQA-powered site that I administer.

To @graeme-perrow, requiring a validated email address before posting helps a bit, but does not remove the problem altogether. You'll also need to check for a valid email address before you allow new users to update their profile. If not, you'll find spam in the bios.

I understand this is now a corporate Q&A site, but why no extend moderator privilege to high-reputation users so that they can delete offensive stuff as soon as it's posted? We've got about the same number of committed users on our site, from all over the world, and there's hardly a spam question, answer or comment that stays online for more than 5 minutes thanks to our attentive moderators.

[VolkerBarth]

That's the message I just got right now when I tried to report another spam:

Sorry, but you don't have enough flags left for today..
The limit is 5 per day..
Please check the faq

OK, for the times on the Sybase domain that limit could have been 5 per year but now it seems somewhat anachronistic:)

@Spammers: Could you please wait until afternoon?

[MarkCulp]

The OSQA software does not have a rep setting to allow a user to delete a question... Considering the increase in amount of spam that we have seen this week I think we will need to change this!

[graeme_perrow]

@Volker: I have no idea what the "Report spam" thing does. I don't get an email or any kind of notification when that happens, and I see nothing in the administrator pages to indicate that anyone has reported anything. For now you can close the question, but as Mark said, we'll look into allowing high-rep users to delete them as well.

[graeme_perrow]

Never mind - found a page that lists all the flagged questions, though I'm a little surprised that there is no notification. I have to manually check the list now and again.

[former_SQLA_member1694886]

@mark-culp: you have a choice between editing the source to extend REP_TO_DELETE_COMMENTS to questions/answers as well ( the threshold is set under hostname/admin/settings/minrep/ ) or add a new min rep rule to delete questions/answers.

An easier solution is to promote a handful of willing high-rep users to moderator status, which would be very much in the spirit of this kind of Stackoverflowish site. Instead of flagging posts that must then be deleted by an admin, why not let them delete anything that is blatant spam right away. In case of doubt, an admin can always undelete later at /admin/tools/nodeman/

[MarkCulp]

Thanks Vincent... we're already discussing options and those that you have mentioned are some alternatives that we're considering.

[VolkerBarth]

@Mark, @Graeme: For the time being, could you enhance the list of reasons to close a question with a "spam" entry?

I make use of "Question is off-topic or not relevant" currently, but I guess that's better used for real off-topic questions, say on MySQL and the like...

(Of course, the close reason is moot as soon as the question is deleted...)

[VolkerBarth]

Would that include "banning" those users, too?

I'm asking since these are different sports IMHO: While I surely would be willing to delete spam mails, I would hesitate to lock-out users - that seems really more like an "admin-only" task...

[graeme_perrow]

No. Moderator status gives a user the authority to edit, close, or delete any questions, answers, or comments. It does not give the ability to suspend users or perform other administrative tasks.

[Former Member]

I registered today and saw there is no human verification check.

Enabling the recaptcha module will make automatic registration more costly:

http://meta.osqa.net/questions/1403/how-can-i-enable-recaptcha-module

good luck,

[Breck_Carter]

Ach, that's not an "invasion", this is an invasion! :)...

[justin_willey]

Living on the North Sea coast it's these chaps I worry about:

[Former Member]

Noggin the Nog?

[justin_willey]

or possibly his cousin Bjørn the Berserker!