Board questions/feedback

[zzm9980]

Hi,

How does one officially report spam or problem posts? also, what about PMs?

I ask because I received spam PM from "Sophiachan". I just assumed other people would get it too, and s/he would be banned. But nope, still posting today. I've now manually forwarded the PM to SMS, but not sure if that is the best method to deal with this?


Also, privacy flaw in the PM system. A malicious user can determine if a victim has read the PMs sent to them. Unread PMs sit in the Outbox, read PMs sit in the Sentbox. Best practice is that a sender should not be able to determine if a recipient has read the message unless the recipient chooses to reply. (Sorry, slow at work today, so it's carrying over to this forum )

[the lynx]

There is a thread for these spammers, started by JR8 and filled by dedicated JR8 himself and nutnut

http://forum.singaporeexpats.com/sutra562230.html

It is meant as revenge so that the spambot can pick up these e-mails and spam them back. And meanwhile, usually moderators would have already done some disinfecting work by that time.

Otherwise, if those spammers seem to slip pass the moderators, you can just PM the moderators directly.

[sundaymorningstaple]

That's the best method. Just forward to one of the mods and we'll do the rest. She sent me one as well, but I advised her to contact Admin via email as I was the only case that I heard about. Now she is history. Spamming via unsolicited PM is a big boo-boo!

We generally don't get too many of those (where no spam has been posted in the forums). As soon as we are notified, well......... I already knew she was a spammer but she hadn't shown her hand yet.

Moderator

[nakatago]

An article about legitimate businesses using spam for marketing. It's like when you open your mailbox and over 9000 flyers are in it.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/20 ... ufacturer/

[JR8]

Hi,

How does one officially report spam or problem posts? also, what about PMs?

I ask because I received spam PM from "Sophiachan". I just assumed other people would get it too, and s/he would be banned. But nope, still posting today. I've now manually forwarded the PM to SMS, but not sure if that is the best method to deal with this?


Also, privacy flaw in the PM system. A malicious user can determine if a victim has read the PMs sent to them. Unread PMs sit in the Outbox, read PMs sit in the Sentbox. Best practice is that a sender should not be able to determine if a recipient has read the message unless the recipient chooses to reply. (Sorry, slow at work today, so it's carrying over to this forum )

I've never received a spam-PM! I've had a flame or two, but never spam . From what I can see the Mods get to 95% of the spam that crops up during waking hours*. I used to report every one I saw but then figured I was probably creating work for the Mods by sending them loadsa PMs. These days due to my current location I get to see what is going on overnight, so any spam there and I PM it to a Mod (usually SMS as he is up earliest!).

The topic that Lynx refers to yeah that is just for karmic payback. It is not a place to 'report' anything, and don't expect Mods to pick anything up from there either...

I've got to say the Mods do a great job, as a heck of a lot of stuff gets cleaned up before most of us even get to see it, and it makes for a much nicer environment.


* You can test this! If you see a spam open the post/topic in a background tab. Revisit/refresh it now and again and see how long it takes for it to be deleted.

p.s. vaguely connected anecdote. Some spammers go at it like machines (in fact some of them probably are machines lol!), they'll say sign-up and them post 5 spams in 10 minutes. When you were out chowing on Thai last Friday I think I new record was made, a newbie spammer did 16 posts in about 15 minutes. The 'View posts since last visit' was completely wallpapered by them! For the record that kind of thing during waking hours is probably not worth reporting, as it's so painfully obvious that the first Mod back is going to see it immediately anyway.