Dealing with spam

afropoika · Thread Author #1 02-24-2010, 06:49 AM

Dealing with spam here at CrackBerry Forums
It continues to amaze me how much spam gets through that ends up posted here, but it amazes me even more that people do not know how to deal with spam properly.

When a spam bot posts a message, it will have notifications enabled for every reply to that message. When someone replies to that message, the bot registers that the message was noticed here and it becomes even more persistent.

REPLYING TO SPAM WILL NOT HELP AT ALL, YOU JUST CONTRIBUTE TO ITS INCREASE.

How to deal with spam properly then?
I'm glad you asked. Next to every message posted here there is an icon in the upper right corner of the message. It looks like this

. If you find that a message is spam, has the sole purpose of advertising a product or is otherwise problematic, use this button to report the post.

How do I know a message has been reported or not?
You don't. Oh, and don't use this as an excuse to reply to spam with the intention to make it clear for others that it has been reported. Moderators will get to know once spam has been reported and it does no harm if the same post is reported multiple times. Once moderators find time to clean up the forums they will remove any reported spam. Even if you don't report a post as spam, a moderator will find it sooner or later and take care of it.

This is a community effort. Please help keep CrackBerry clean! Thank you.

sedalia066 · #2 02-24-2010, 06:53 AM

Thanks for the advice. That reporting button is a fine thing. That was one more facet of CB that was not in my knowledge base. From now on I will hit the button at the first sign of spam.

Reed McLay · #3 02-24-2010, 09:11 AM

Thank you, that is good advise.

The Moderator Alert button creates an email alert to all moderators on our BlackBerrys.

In the vast majority of cases, the offending post/thread will be deleted in a couple of minutes.

branta · #4 02-25-2010, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shinkodachi

When a spam bot posts a message, it will have notifications enabled for every reply to that message. When someone replies to that message, the bot registers that the message was noticed here and it becomes even more persistent.

REPLYING TO SPAM WILL NOT HELP AT ALL, YOU JUST CONTRIBUTE TO ITS INCREASE.

[snip]

Once moderators find time to clean up the forums they will remove any reported spam. Even if you don't report a post as spam, a moderator will find it sooner or later and take care of it.

I will say it again, even louder
NEVER Reply or Quote Spam

Replying to spam simply increases workload for the moderator, so it's a really bad idea.

If users actually Quote the spam they also face the risk they will be banned as spammers in a forum search. A lot of spam has common keywords rarely used elsewhere, and the search engine doesn't discriminate quotes. If there are many hits it's simply a quick visual scan of the search results, all the posts have spam format... Can and Ban. Exit a load of spammers and one user who should have known better.

F0nage · #5 02-25-2010, 05:06 PM

If nobody replies to let people know they have reported the spammer, then many people may reply to try to alert the mods to it. Are you saying you just want us to ignore spam and not report it? I have reported tons of it in the past few weeks, because I don't like seeing this forum deterioriate, and I'm in Asia so I'm online while people in America are mostly not online.

John Yester · #6 02-25-2010, 05:12 PM

http://forums.crackberry.com/f3/how-...um-spam-28343/

When logged in to the site, on every post there is a little image (triangle with an exclamation mark) located in the post header to the right of the post #

This is the Report Post button. Just click that, type in any message to go along with the Report (label it as spam, or inappropriate (and provide reason why), etc.) and then Send Report. This goes to the moderation team who will then take immediate action. Replying to the post or PMing a moderator won't set off the alarms as quick as the Report Post button, so please use that function.

F0nage · #7 02-25-2010, 05:18 PM

I understand that. The point is how does anyone know that a person reported it if nobody posts in the thread saying "spam was reported"

berryfit · #8 02-25-2010, 05:27 PM

So everyone knows as well. When a mass mail goes out, or a post is made by a spammer, when the link is clicked, it gets stats about how many hits it receives and from where.

Its not just replying, its simply clicking the link. If they see an abundance of folks clicking the link, it looks like interest to them. They'll keep doing it, and then send out or sell to others lists of people or sites that respond favorably to spam.

If you see something like "2 goats having sex with clown" or "Get cialis and viagra free" dont even open the post. If you do...for gods sake, dont click their link...it will be reported to them as interest...

branta · #9 02-25-2010, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by F0nage

If nobody replies to let people know they have reported the spammer, then many people may reply to try to alert the mods to it. Are you saying you just want us to ignore spam and not report it?

We are saying, Report any and all spam (or suspected spam), and we don't care if we get multiple reports for the same spam.

John Yester · #10 02-25-2010, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by F0nage

I understand that. The point is how does anyone know that a person reported it if nobody posts in the thread saying "spam was reported"

Best advice is to use the report button. That is the direct notification to us when you report it.

So if three people are viewing a thread and three people report it. That's how it goes. No biggie.

We will get to is ASAP.

F0nage · #11 02-25-2010, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Branta

We are saying, Report any and all spam (or suspected spam), and we don't care if we get multiple reports for the same spam.

Ok, will do. Do you have mods covering the forums around the clock?

This morning when I signed on there were 15 posts from one spammer and others from other spammers.

branta · #12 02-25-2010, 05:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by berryfit

So everyone knows as well. When a mass mail goes out, or a post is made by a spammer, when the link is clicked, it gets stats about how many hits it receives and from where.

Its not just replying, its simply clicking the link. If they see an abundance of folks clicking the link, it looks like interest to them. They'll keep doing it, and then send out or sell to others lists of people or sites that respond favorably to spam.

If you see something like "2 goats having sex with clown" or "Get cialis and viagra free" dont even open the post. If you do...for gods sake, dont click their link...it will be reported to them as interest...

To clarify, that problem is clicking the spammer's links in the hope it really will reveal porn. More likely it will be a hit counter and malware download.

There is no risk by clicking CrackBerry's Report icon - if there's any statistic generated it is within our system, and only the admins have access to it (not even moderators).

Snarfler · #13 02-26-2010, 07:13 AM

I like to post in spam threads to up my post count.

Wait, you mean my post count goes back down when those posts are deleted with the spam threads?

Well, so much for that then