Spambots

I know it's not my decision to make, but can we disable new members for a little while, till we get on top of the spambot issue?

(Since the mods seem to have deleted those threads, there were at least 6 in the past 2 days).

All that spamming was done from the same location, so it was easy to put a stop to it. The spambots will always be with us unfortunately, but usually they're not as blatant. Sometimes they just copy other people's posts and weird stuff like that, presumably to build a credible looking account, or to insert links into their signature.

I don't delete spam. Instead I move it to a forum that only moderators can see. In the past, I've been told that's easier because hiding the posts keeps the spammer's IP and other identifying information more readily accessible than deleting them would.

There were three accounts posting this garbage. I b& all three, and I hope that what Memblers did will keep them from coming back.

Yeah I've been in the habit of deleting the spammer accounts and posts (been doing it since the start of the forum, though it's an unwinnable battle, the userlist is polluted). When you delete the account and retain the posts though it gets rid of any useful identification. Maybe I should break that habit? By that I mean just hide the posts in the hidden spam section. I've always been kind of assuming that most spammers are "drive-by" and don't come back, which is why it usually didn't seem like accumulating their "fingerprints" would help.

For them it's a fact that sites, forums and wikis are like being at a McDonalds:

"Welcome to NESDEV, May we take your order?" - SpeakerPhone
"Yes, I would like the BanHammer 9000 plz?" - Spammer

I meant moving the comments to Spam so that other admins more knowledgeable about the low-level stuff know which accounts to delete and which IPs to ban if need be.

Just wanted to report user HaroldKa for spam. Sorry for hijacking the topic, but it felt better to just reply than to start a whole new topic for one spammer.

On the plus side, it did bring me back to this forum after being gone for probably over two years!

Every post has a report button (look for the ! point). Use that for reporting spammers. Chances are extremely good that the spammers have already been reported.

edit: Looks like even the PMs have report buttons as well!

Got the same spam from a GregKa

I have received a suspicious email from "GregKa" claiming i have received a private message.

Yeah, checking the nesdev email outbox it looks like that hit quite a few people, that sucks.

I cleaned out a lot of the newly registered fake users, hopefully there's not any older sleeper accounts just waiting (but so far it seems like this only happens within a couple days of the account being crated). And WoahMan has done some changes as well, so hopefully we'll start to see the end of this little shit-storm. For now.