Strange stuff happening on this forum!

For the time being there is more spam than new ordinary posts. The autoforums guys need to step up the anti spam work.

Yes, they must have deleted the topic about the change in admin. I had at least 4 replies on that string, and my stats now show less total posts that it did before.

Fibber2 said:

I came to this 'News & Announcements' section looking for last month's announcement from David about the change in admin, but I no longer see it. Removed, or am I looking in the wrong place?

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That discussion was removed by [topspy] a few days ago. I got a system email when the discussion that I was following was deleted.

My personal guess as to why the spam exploded is that the SiennaChat's expanded visibility on the Auto Forum web sites pointed this place out ot the spammers. The timing was too close to be entirely coincidental.

think the delete was unintentional as some spammer posted in that thread. with the smf software, you have to split the topic to move a post.

Wow, that's a real hazard. Some of the best stuff here could get trashed if the spammers target some of the more popular threads. Can the new landlords reconstruct lost topics?

sienna said:

think the delete was unintentional as some spammer posted in that thread. with the smf software, you have to split the topic to move a post.

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Okay, but why would the post need to be moved? A spam post just needs to be deleted; or if the deletion will break the chain of the thread, then the contents just need to be cleared with an edit.

This is really getting out of control. I think all new member requests need a CV and a background check before being accepted!

Fibber2 said:

I think all new member requests need a CV and a background check before being accepted!

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Registration requires reading characters from an image (good idea, but that method has been defeated), and processing a verification e-mail. The e-mail means that the spammer needs control of an e-mail address. This combination seems like reasonable security, but it is obviously no longer sufficient. I have no idea what workable scheme might be effective.

Sorry guys. I haven't been around here as much lately.

I did remove some spam a while ago.....both by manual/individual post deletion as well as by global username deletion/banning. I did my best to try and sort through it, but may have inadvertently deleted unrelated posts. It was very tedious and there was an overwhelming amount to review. Apologies.

I think that [Narboza] may be correct in that there appears to be a direct correlation between the sudden increase in the amount of spam and our newly increased public exposure via our affiliation with [Auto Forums].