What do you about spammers posting fake intros?

Discussion in 'Managing Your Online Community' started by CM30, Jul 14, 2012.

  1. CM30

    CM30 Regular Member

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    And fluff posts? Because I've seen quite a few of these recently, and I'm wondering whether it's because some black hat 'seo' company is trying to spam forums as a sneaky way of promoting clients or something. You know the format, something like this:

    There was one of these on TAZ recently and a quick Google search shows thousands of results for the same term all by dodgy members who posted only one or twice. Often you'll see another spammer/bot reply to the first one.

    Have you seen this kind of thing much? Do you delete said intros and ban said members as quickly as possible to stop your site being drowned in a deluge of fluff content? I think I've seen someone do something like this on my own forum once, but I wasn't sure enough to ban them yet and they thankfully seemed to have disappeared by now. Is there some company or ten out there trying to spam forums for links and selling it as 'seo'?
     
  2. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    The first clue is when it's obvious the member is ESL (English as a second language). My working theory is someone would find another site in your niche in their first language.

    I nuke members with fluff posts and bogus intros after they fail to respond to a PM.
     
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  3. CM30

    CM30 Regular Member

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    That's an interesting way of detecting it. So you send a PM to anyone you consider a spammer to see if they respond?
     
  4. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    Yup. Most spammers won't bother because it's all automated.
     
  5. bauss

    bauss Regular Member

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    I never had this problem on my forum, but I think sending a PM might be a good idea like @CM30 mentioned. Ask them to update their intro, and if they don't respond. You ban them.
     
  6. benjaminp

    benjaminp Regular Member

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    I get very few of these as StopForumSpam seems to do a pretty good job at stopping automated posting. The odd few that do get through, I'll often just delete the post, PM and change their posting to moderated.
     

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