# SOAK - Urgent Pad Thread - once spammed always spammed?



## JLucPicard (Jul 8, 2004)

It seems the spammers have found the "Urgent - Pad Recordings" thread, and nearly half of the instant e-mail notifications I get on it now are just pure spammer posts.

Knowing nothing about bots and the like (which may not even be involved here), is this something where now that this is happening, it will continue to happen, maybe with more frequency (like this thread is marked 'please spam me!' to whatever it is that is triggering these spammers to post)?

Or is the spamming a pretty much arbitrary process and this thread just seems to be getting hit more (or is just more apparent because of the instant notification feature?)?

If there is something 'cookie-like' about the process that now that the thread has been discovered by the spammers that the frequency of the obnoxious posts will increase, thus decreasing the utility for which the thread was designed in the first place, is there an argument to be made for the mods to start a new 'Urgent - Pad Recordings' thread and let this one go away (like it's identified by it's post # or something)? I know there would be the inconvenience of people having to subscribe to the new thread, but if that cuts down on the useless notifications, it may be worth it.

It's just getting frustrating that the bulk of notifications now are just spam and have nothing to do with schedule issues.

You can probably tell from my post that I have little knowledge of such things, but that's why I'm tossing it out to the SOAK's out there!


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## sieglinde (Aug 11, 2002)

The Spam seems to have been removed. But of course that doesn't help if you have the posts emailed to you. The moderators ban the spammers and that stops it for a while.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Oh believe me, the spammers find far more threads than just that one.

I get emails all the time for threads that have been dormant for a year or more because some idiot thinks we all read Cyrillic or have no idea where to buy uggs.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Fadeargueda said:


> instantloanonlinedirectly com/#nksmc]payday loan - instant payday loan , instantloanonlinedirectly com/#whgnh instant payday loan


Love it. Spam in a spam thread. Is this irony or what?

Can always tell because the poster usually has only 1 post.

Reporting in a second!

And now it is gone, but the above was posted before my post originally.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Yes, it does seem that there has been an uptick in recent months.

I don't think the spammers are trying to be snipers. They are using the shotgun approach and hoping to catch something with the width or their shots. 

Best thing to do is report them ASAP. You know about the triangular red exclamation point under the user info for reporting posts, yes?


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## allan (Oct 14, 2002)

Yeah, I often see new spam topics, and sometimes spam appended to existing threads.


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## sharkster (Jul 3, 2004)

I got one the other day. I didn't want to open the actual PM, so I had no idea how to report it.

I, too, always wonder how many suckers they can round up with such practices. Must be even more stupid people out there than I know.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

sharkster said:


> I got one the other day. I didn't want to open the actual PM, so I had no idea how to report it.
> 
> I, too, always wonder how many suckers they can round up with such practices. Must be even more stupid people out there than I know.


Look at the left hand side of the post. At the bottom, below the user name, is a little TiVo guy and a triangle with an exclamation point in it.

Click on the triangle, you'll get a text box into which you just need to type "spam" and then click submit.

The only inconvenience is having to wait 60 seconds before clicking the triangle on the next spammer to be reported.


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## JLucPicard (Jul 8, 2004)

waynomo said:


> Yes, it does seem that there has been an uptick in recent months.
> 
> I don't think the spammers are trying to be snipers. They are using the shotgun approach and hoping to catch something with the width or their shots.
> 
> Best thing to do is report them ASAP. You know about the triangular red exclamation point under the user info for reporting posts, yes?


Yup - report them all the time.

The one particular thread (subject of the OP) was getting hit several times at the point I posted. The trouble with that being that thread has many people subscribed for immediate notification. It was getting tiresome at the time getting nothing but spam notifications.

That seems to have died off in that thread for now, thankfully! :up:


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## pkscout (Jan 11, 2003)

JLucPicard said:


> Yup - report them all the time.
> 
> The one particular thread (subject of the OP) was getting hit several times at the point I posted. The trouble with that being that thread has many people subscribed for immediate notification. It was getting tiresome at the time getting nothing but spam notifications.
> 
> That seems to have died off in that thread for now, thankfully! :up:


Unfortunately it seems to be back. I've finally given up and unsubscribed from the thread. I'd say it's about 50% spam and 50% telling me that football ran over. Since we don't watch anything on Sunday affected by that, the value of the thread no longer outweighs the noise of the SPAM.


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## allan (Oct 14, 2002)

ferrumpneuma said:


> dvihjasdklsdvklasvkl


Looks convincing to me! Sign me up! 

Seriously, I don't understand it either.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

I thought members had to respond to 5 posts before creating a thread.

Lately I have seen threads created by people with only 1 post. I am just not remembering the policy correctly?

FYI - I think 4 were spam and 1 was legit.


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## allan (Oct 14, 2002)

waynomo said:


> I thought members had to respond to 5 posts before creating a thread.
> 
> Lately I have seen threads created by people with only 1 post. I am just not remembering the policy correctly?
> 
> FYI - I think 4 were spam and 1 was legit.


I think it's 5 posts before you can have a clickable link in a post.


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## lew (Mar 12, 2002)

I don't know how the forum software works but requiring a minimum number of posts and/or being a member of TCF for a minimum number of time (maybe a week) before posting on the Urgent Pad Thread should stop most spammers without having much of an effect on the value of the thread.

I don't know if those settings can be tweaked for a single thread.


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