Spammers on my ONS site.

[benny1982]

Hi

2 years ago I set up a group dedicated to the Boniface surname of Sussex. I have had a few genuine members who also have a Boniface line and I have added a lot of good info about the Boniface families to the site which is Google Groups.

But I have had spam messages appearing in the Discussions thread and some member have signed to the site only to post spam and I have had to send a few on their way into the banned members list. Now I have changed the access where all new messages have to be reviewed and a new feature where any new members have to ask a question before they join which is "Are you joining for genealogical research".

Will this help me and prevent any future spammers completely or will some be able to post spam?

Ben

[MarkJ]

You won't stop them all Ben :(

The question will stop automated spamming - where a program simply registers and then spams because the program cannot answer. However, a percentage of spammers are real people - sometimes paid by the person running the spamming campaign, other times completing the registration to receive some other reward.

It should certainly reduce the numbers dramatically though :)

Mark

[benny1982]

I wonder why spamming is so called. Is it after the name of the meat you can buy? ;)

Yes it will certainly reduce the number of rewards spammers get for spamming for the spamming companies if I add these restrictions to my group. I have been getting about two spam posts a month on the site.

[MarkJ]

Yes it is named after the meat ;)
In actual fact, the name comes from the Monty Python sketch where the chap goes into a cafe and every single item comes with spam - and at the end there are a load of vikings singing "spam, spam...."

Two a month is nothing ;) But still very annoying!
When I was an admin of a forum for the linux distro I worked on, we had literally dozens of spammers per day tring to register. Over a period of time we managed to pretty much stop them, although even with several different measures in place - including IP bans, a captcha and question - one or two still got though.

Mark

[benny1982]

Two a month is enough. ;) None at all is better. ;)

I dont need to explain the content of these spam messages for obvious reasons but they are very obscene and I will eradicate any such ones from my genealogy group.

If any more spammers manage to join they will soon be outed but my new restrictions will certainly reduce the number of spammers. i have added a message explaining this for the genuine members.

Although some spammers might join under the guise of being a genealogist but they will soon be found out if they do.