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I am seeing a spam post about ESPN/Watch HD everyday and I think its from the same user

  1. https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/62920/nhl-los-angeles-kings-vs-edmonton-oilers-live-nhl-online-free-hd
  2. https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/62786/espn-live-columbus-blue-jackets-vs-anaheim-ducks-live-free-ice-hockey-game
  3. https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/62787/espn-live-anaheim-ducks-vs-columbus-blue-jackets-live-free-ice-hockey-game

Can this user/IP be blocked ?

And one more thing that I noticed is that some of spam posts have -8 votes, shouldnt we be flagging it as spam instead ? 6 spam flag automatically closes it right ? Previously deleted user has created another account now.

EDIT : Can we block an user automatically(without the need of a mod) if X no of questions gets flagged as spam.

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  • 1
    Couldn't agree more! It is very irritating to see this happen so often. The links in the question are (obviously) not working, because the questions are deleted. I think these should be removed; just like the original posts and user ;-)
    – AjitS
    Commented Feb 20, 2013 at 10:11
  • 5
    @Indrock The links are all rel=nofollow anyway so removing them is unnecessary. In fact spam posts should not be edited in any way, they should be left exactly as they are, otherwise it might not be obvious to the person handling the flag that the post is indeed spam and they might not delete it. The examples in this question are obviously spam from the titles, but there are much more subtle attempts to spam the site too
    – Clive Mod
    Commented Feb 20, 2013 at 10:28
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    @2-Stroker We can't ban on IP - entire institutions might get locked out of the site because of one nefarious user sitting behind a NAT config. Your sentiment is spot on though.
    – Clive Mod
    Commented Feb 20, 2013 at 10:30
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    @Clive I wasn't talking about editing the spam posts (I agree totally that they shouldn't be edited). Also, rel=nofollow would ensure no harm technically. I was more concerned about the readability of the question according to future visitors (humans ;-)).
    – AjitS
    Commented Feb 20, 2013 at 12:00
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    @Indrock Gotcha, apologies :)
    – Clive Mod
    Commented Feb 20, 2013 at 12:01
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    Have you considered integrating the site with stopforumspam.com to try to catch these users before they create an account, or to report their activity for the benefit of other sites?
    – Triskelion
    Commented Feb 24, 2013 at 0:43
  • @Triskelion Great suggestion, but stopforumspam removed the ability to report activity without 'evidence' last month so there's no way to do that automatically any more. I can see a manual reporting system being a pain to implement, and I don't know if the devs would consider it just for this site. Ditto for the username/email checking service, even though it is very good
    – Clive Mod
    Commented Feb 24, 2013 at 4:00

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
5

For obvious spam posts, like the above I usually just destroy the user (which also deletes all of his posts) if he only have a few posts. This remove the problem, but we can't ban people based on IP or similar.

When I'm on mobile I just delete the post since the mobile theme doesn't support mod actions very well.

6 spam flags automatically close + delete the post.

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For the spam attack that has been going on the last month, I would guess that the mods have destroyed well over two hundred users and over three hundred spam posts. It could be more (I stopped counting).

For the most part, the posts are on the site for a few minutes at most, as the mods frequently check the site for flags, etc, and the system has automagically been taking care of a decent amount of it.

The SE admins have "banned" certain URL patterns, which has helped slow down the spam, but not all of it. There has been no real pattern to the IPs, so banning them isn't a possibility.

As others have mentioned, if you see spam, just flag it as spam. Don't use other flags, and don't edit the post.

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On my community site I use spambot which talks to the stopforumspam site - that blocked 99% of spammers from even signing up. I haven't seen false negatives and you can change the setting to only block users if more than x other sites have reported that IP address, username or email address.

Then I use a rule to send moderators an email if a new user posts a node or a comment that includes "http://" or "@". That way we can remove spammers before most regular users even notice.

0

Today we got 5+ Spam posts in our website. Can we do something like stopping the questions with previously spam reported domain names ?

Well i am not aware of the moderator tools available right now. I hope i can have it later somehow.

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  • Same user badrinath(diff account) has spammed today.
    – GoodSp33d
    Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 5:43
  • And URLs used are tinyurls in some questions, so its not possible to block based on URL alone.
    – GoodSp33d
    Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 5:48
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    Nope, nothing automated we can do I'm afraid. Let's face it, 5 spam posts to handle in a day isn't the end of the world :)
    – Clive Mod
    Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 13:44
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    Actually, we probably got over twenty in the last 24 hours. The mods and the system take care of everything pretty quickly. You likely saw things in the period where people weren't flagging as spam, and when the mods were asleep...
    – mpdonadio Mod
    Commented Mar 5, 2013 at 19:50

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