# Thanks for getting rid of this morning spam!!!



## Intheswamp

I know I wasn't dreaming it, but a few minutes ago I was checking new messages and there were about five(?) pages with lists of spam different posts/threads. Written in a foreign language except for the end of each one that had a university or college referenced. I was counting the pages when I started back-tracking through the pages and noticed the number of these posts were dwindling until there were no more!!!

Hat's off to whoever took care of this. Job well done!


----------



## Mike Lang

They’re hitting most forums. It’s been going on for a week or two. They eventually go away.


----------



## JoeKustra

Mike Lang said:


> They're hitting most forums. It's been going on for a week or two. They eventually go away.


For the last year, there are about 50 per day on TiVo's web forums:
TiVo Features | Discussion Forums | TiVo

TiVo Troubleshooting | Discussion Forums | TiVo

I asked IBM if they would let me delete them, but no answer. The first forum I linked to has 970 posts. 900 are spam.


----------



## JoeKustra

Check the Bolt forum.

I would not object to a two-stage registration. Or a two-stage login. I don't think this is going away soon.


----------



## Mike Lang

Bolt forum where?


----------



## JoeKustra

Mike Lang said:


> Bolt forum where?


Very quickly removed. Nice job.


----------



## wmcbrine

JoeKustra said:


> I asked IBM if they would let me delete them, but no answer.


Maybe if you asked TiVo?


----------



## JoeKustra

wmcbrine said:


> Maybe if you asked TiVo?


I did. When you report spam, the message goes to IBM. Send them an email:
[email protected]


----------



## ThAbtO

Its been happening mostly the last 3 nights. Mostly always at night. In chinese also. 

I can watch them using the "Spy" feature literally seconds after they post.

Tonight there seems to be 4 on at the same time.


----------



## spartanstew

Intheswamp said:


> I know I wasn't dreaming it, but a few minutes ago I was checking new messages and there were about five(?) pages with lists of spam different posts/threads.


Like this?


----------



## SullyND

I’m surprised the forum software doesn’t have some way of recognizing and blocking this type of attack. Wasn’t there also some sort of geographical blacklist, whereby the forum is not accessible by certain regions?


----------



## Intheswamp

spartanstew said:


> Like this?


Yup, like that! It amazes me that I haven't seen them before.


----------



## JoeKustra

Intheswamp said:


> Yup, like that! It amazes me that I haven't seen them before.


TiVo's support forums. 970 posts, 900 are spam in non-English languages.
TiVo Features | Discussion Forums | TiVo


----------



## allan

I haven't seen it here, but I have on other forums.


----------



## ThAbtO

Tonight there were at least 8 new spammer user names.


cdfgtyhjncdf05,
trudfgdfhe5,
ftghfghdhfgh04,
lhggtyurtgt07,
iunfghbvf05,
timeking06,
g3023025,
otototototototo1,


----------



## zeeker

I just saw this chinese character post-spamming happening this morning, and I was doing different profile posts & conversations to staff members, trying (and not knowing the proper way) to report it to someone ...
Looks like its a well known issue, so no need for me to panic further 
To staff who I tried to contact ... apologies if I broke protocol in any way.


----------



## ThAbtO

Quite annoying....


----------



## Mikeguy

Personally, I went into each of the (Chinese?) sites and purchased the hawked items.


----------



## Mr Tony

Its not gone. Seems like each forum has pages of that crap


----------



## TIVO_GUY_HERE

Surprised they are still getting people to open the threads..


----------



## JoeKustra

TIVO_GUY_HERE said:


> Surprised they are still getting people to open the threads..


It's how to report the spam. Mods here are amazing. On the TiVo support forums there are 50 per day and they don't get deleted.


----------



## Hoffer

It messes with the "New Posts" feature. I assume they don't remove this spam, but like ignore it?? When I click new posts, there is hardly anything there. There will be like one thread on a page. I know threads I've ignored limit what appears in new posts. So, I assume the spam is more ignored than deleted. Not a big deal. Just something I've noticed.


----------



## spartanstew

Hoffer said:


> It messes with the "New Posts" feature. I assume they don't remove this spam, but like ignore it?? When I click new posts, there is hardly anything there. There will be like one thread on a page. I know threads I've ignored limit what appears in new posts. So, I assume the spam is more ignored than deleted. Not a big deal. Just something I've noticed.


Click on the "show ignored content" in the lower right


----------



## HerronScott

Looks like they are back again. I obviously haven't set up an account here in a really really long time  but I assume there's some protections in place for preventing robot/automated account creations so curious how they are getting past this.

Scott


----------



## Luke M

TIVO_GUY_HERE said:


> Surprised they are still getting people to open the threads..


It's probably just search bots opening them.


----------



## jlb

JoeKustra said:


> Check the Bolt forum.
> 
> I would not object to a two-stage registration. Or a two-stage login. I don't think this is going away soon.


Seconded!


----------



## Rob Helmerichs

One would think it's possible to automatically block or prohibit posts with Chinese characters in thread titles...


----------



## keenanSR

Rob Helmerichs said:


> One would think it's possible to automatically block or prohibit posts with Chinese characters in thread titles...


There must be some way to block these emails, I don't get this crap from other forums I visit, it's only this forum. I had over 200 notification emails last night/early this morning. I'm a little surprised Google(Gmail) hasn't blacklisted the forum.


----------



## stile99

JoeKustra said:


> It's how to report the spam. Mods here are amazing. On the TiVo support forums there are 50 per day and they don't get deleted.


I don't open the threads, I just click on the poster and report the spamMER rather than the spam. Opening all those threads and reporting each one individually?


----------



## sharkster

I got an email the other day from the Season Pass forum, with a post, but not like that with the Asian characters. It was something trying to sell me something. By the time I got here to find and report it, it was already gone.

I really appreciate how they take care of such things here!


----------



## Rob Helmerichs

Yeah, I'm sure it's a never-ending battle, and the fact that we so rarely see it being fought speaks well for the people who are fighting on our behalf..


----------



## JoeKustra

stile99 said:


> I don't open the threads, I just click on the poster and report the spamMER rather than the spam. Opening all those threads and reporting each one individually?


No, I sometimes copy the message and send it to IBM's email address. I also sent one to TiVo and they couldn't figure out where it came from. Those URL can be confusing.

I'm referencing TiVo's support forums: TiVo Troubleshooting | Discussion Forums | TiVo


----------



## keenanSR

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Yeah, I'm sure it's a never-ending battle, and the fact that we so rarely see it being fought speaks well for the people who are fighting on our behalf..


Except for all the email notifications.


----------



## ThAbtO

keenanSR said:


> Except for all the email notifications.


Yes, I was watching the posts appear and my mailbox filling up. It was the 4th night it was happening.

I wish TCF would use Captcha and email verify on new user signups. Sure would help reduce bots signing up.


----------



## keenanSR

ThAbtO said:


> Yes, I was watching the posts appear and my mailbox filling up. It was the 4th night it was happening.
> 
> I wish TCF would use Captcha and email verify on new user signups. Sure would help reduce bots signing up.


It's really bad on a mobile device like a phone, as I was marking each email for deletion I noticed the page kept shifting down as new spam emails kept coming in. They were spamming me faster than I could delete them!


----------



## ThAbtO

keenanSR said:


> It's really bad on a mobile device like a phone, as I was marking each email for deletion I noticed the page kept shifting down as new spam emails kept coming in. They were spamming me faster than I could delete them!


Its a little easier for me, on the Gmail app, I just swipe to delete.

I would volunteer to be the Spam Police, if they let me. Besides, I am usually up during the times they were posting. They finally stopped at around 3am PT.


----------



## keenanSR

ThAbtO said:


> Its a little easier for me, on the Gmail app, I just swipe to delete.


I use Gmail as well but I find when deleting a multitude of emails it's easier to press and hold one spam email then scroll and mark all the rest of them for deletion then hit delete.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs

keenanSR said:


> Except for all the email notifications.


Huh. I don't get those.

How does that work? Do you get a notification any time anything is posted? That would drive me crazy, even without the spam!


----------



## JoeKustra

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Huh. I don't get those.
> How does that work? Do you get a notification any time anything is posted? That would drive me crazy, even without the spam!


When you hit Reply, or start a thread, click on "More Options...". There is a check box for an email to be sent when new stuff is posted.


----------



## Intheswamp

ThAbtO said:


> Its a little easier for me, on the Gmail app, I just swipe to delete.
> 
> I would volunteer to be the Spam Police, if they let me. Besides, I am usually up during the times they were posting. They finally stopped at around 3am PT.


So what time is that in China, early afternoon? Makes sense...hit us while most of us (not you, ThAbtO ) are sleeping.


----------



## eddyj

JoeKustra said:


> When you hit Reply, or start a thread, click on "More Options...". There is a check box for an email to be sent when new stuff is posted.


That would not send you emails for new threads others create. But if you have subscribed to that forum (with email notifications), then you can get an email for each new thread.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs

eddyj said:


> That would not send you emails for new threads others create. But if you have subscribed to that forum (with email notifications), then you can get an email for each new thread.


Yeah, that would drive me crazy. Even without the spam.

Then again, I visit the forum often enough that it would be silly anyway; I can always tell when new threads have been posted just by looking at the new posts listing.


----------



## eddyj

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Yeah, that would drive me crazy. Even without the spam.


I actually use this feature for the meets and the operations forums. They rarely get new threads and when they do, I like knowing about them (but I just get a notification, not emails).


----------



## keenanSR

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Huh. I don't get those.
> 
> How does that work? Do you get a notification any time anything is posted? That would drive me crazy, even without the spam!





eddyj said:


> That would not send you emails for new threads others create. But if you have subscribed to that forum (with email notifications), then you can get an email for each new thread.


That's what I've done for a few forums and it's normally not a problem unless a spammer is running amuck on that particular forum. I find subbing to a forum time saving in that I can quickly determine whether I'm interested in the new post/subject without having to visit the forum itself and scroll through posts I've already deemed unimportant to me.


----------



## keenanSR

Intheswamp said:


> So what time is that in China, early afternoon? Makes sense...hit us while most of us (not you, ThAbtO ) are sleeping.


They start coming in late afternoon CST(China Standard Time) which is about midnight PST.


----------



## ThAbtO

Intheswamp said:


> what time is that in China, early afternoon?


Pacific Time + 16 hrs.


----------



## SullyND

Wow, the spammers have been very active this morning... How many posts? I’d guess over 1,000.


----------



## Mike Lang

They're good. They answer logic questions and post from IP addresses including the US & Canada.


----------



## Mikeguy

SullyND said:


> Wow, the spammers have been very active this morning... How many posts? I'd guess over 1,000.


Lordy. I guess there's a value to sleeping in, in the morning.


----------



## Hoffer

Mikeguy said:


> Lordy. I guess there's a value to sleeping in, in the morning.


Yeah, the "new post" function is pretty worthless first thing in the morning. Might be 3 threads on page one and zero threads on the next couple pages.


----------



## JoeKustra

Now you see why TiVo is killing their support forums. They have been living with this for about a year.

I still find Twitter works ok. It's the only reason I use it: to bother TiVo. But they can be stupid on occasion.


----------



## Mikeguy

JoeKustra said:


> Now you see why TiVo is killing their support forums. They have been living with this for about a year.
> 
> I still find Twitter works ok. It's the only reason I use it: to bother TiVo. But they can be stupid on occasion.


Other companies and forums seem to be able to handle it. A tech. company that can't adopt measures to deal with spam?

TiVo eliminating its own forum and related assistance/service: shameful.


----------



## stevel

Of course, TCF is not run by TiVo. Throttling is a good way to deal with this particular form of spam, but it tends not to be an option built in to forum software. For example, require 60 seconds between posts and no more than five per hour. And, since these spammers register multiple usernames, perhaps there could be a limit on registrations per subnet or something like that. I’d need more insight into the pattern to have other ideas.


----------



## JoeKustra

Mikeguy said:


> Other companies and forums seem to be able to handle it. A tech. company that can't adopt measures to deal with spam?
> TiVo eliminating its own forum and related assistance/service: shameful.


True, but even before the spam 90% of the answers from TiVo were answered after a week and then it was just to restart three times. Like TCF, the only help was from non-TiVo members.


----------



## keenanSR

Mikeguy said:


> Other companies and forums seem to be able to handle it. A tech. company that can't adopt measures to deal with spam?
> 
> TiVo eliminating its own forum and related assistance/service: shameful.


Yes, all that tells me is that TiVo would rather save the cost of fixing the problem and instead use someone else's platform(Twitter) to provide support to their customers. A sign of the times I suppose.


----------



## Mikeguy

JoeKustra said:


> True, but even before the spam 90% of the answers from TiVo were answered after a week and then it was just to restart three times. Like TCF, the only help was from non-TiVo members.


And that's part of the shamefulness.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs

stevel said:


> For example, require 60 seconds between posts and no more than five per hour.


Jeez, dude, whaddaya got against Smeek?


----------



## ThAbtO

I was still watching, reporting and putting them on ignore (so it won't fill my inbox.)

Not like it will do much good....


----------



## NorthAlabama

looks like they've started early this evening...


----------



## Mikeguy

Just caught how this thread appears on the forum main page.










Thought you'd appreciate it, @NorthAlabama.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs

Only now, we're grateful for getting rid of Mikeguy. HA!!!



Oh, crap.


----------

