It appears to be a waste of time...

[laptopwriter]

to report someone for spam. For over a month now, some jackass keeps posting spam advertising naked pix of his wife in the comments of various stories. I have "reported," every single one I've seen over that period of time and yet they still persist. What's the sense of reporting them?

 

[Cruel2BKind]

to report someone for spam. For over a month now, some jackass keeps posting spam advertising naked pix of his wife in the comments of various stories. I have "reported," every single one I've seen over that period of time and yet they still persist. What's the sense of reporting them?

Laurel sez she's working on it. It's hard to stop somebody from anonymously commenting. You can do it per story, but most people don't want to delete anonymous comments, because a lot of anon comments are positive.

I've been deleting every spam I get as soon as I can, and really, that's just all you can hope for. Delete it as fast as you can, keep reporting it, and eventually, it will go away.

 

[laptopwriter]

But isn't there a way she can stop

him from signing in from that I.P. address? I wouldn't think it would be that hard from the administrator's end, to track down the I.P. address and ban it some way. I know it can be done with other sites because I've seen it done.

I had a friend who was a member of a bondage site and went off on another member. That member complained and he couldn't get into the site any longer. I've never hosted a website but I can't believe it's that difficult to do, especially when you have the guy's email address.

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, it's just so damn aggravating to see this jackass popping up everywhere.

 

[slyc_willie]

The poster may not always be using the same IP address. I can drive down the street to a cafe and use the Internet there, then go to Mickey D's and use theirs. Both have different IP addresses. It could be that Laurel (or Manu, to be more precise) has blocked one or more IP addresses, but they can't get them all.

Besides, in the case of using public access Internet, it wouldn't be right to block the address of a commonly-used IP. That would be denying some people the right to access Lit, who have never done anything to warrant it.

 

[laptopwriter]

Good point

Never thought of using public access. Your point is very valid. Thanks.

 

[slyc_willie]

Never thought of using public access. Your point is very valid. Thanks.

Unfortunately, on any sort of website like this that invites commenting, spam and rude postings are inevitable. Just one of those things we have to put up with.

 

[sr71plt]

Yep, Veronika Kay just keeps on spamming the New list.

 

[lovecraft68]

I gave up on reporting anything since a bunch of people reported scouries-and on more than one occasion- posting pics and links that led to sites infested with malware and putting the other users here PC's at risk.

Nothing was done, nothing will ever be done with him or the posters like LJ reloaded who stalk people through and off lit.

So as far as I'm concerned the spammers can have at it.

 

[drinkz]

......

 

[jehoram]

Yep, Veronika Kay just keeps on spamming the New list.

I've caught some of those and reported them, and the comments were removed within a day or so of my alerting the moderators. So there's hope. The system isn't perfect, but it seems to be perfectible.

 

[sr71plt]

I've caught some of those and reported them, and the comments were removed within a day or so of my alerting the moderators. So there's hope. The system isn't perfect, but it seems to be perfectible.

You can remove it yourself as soon as you see it. I do. That could give the Web site more time to think about maybe playing whack-a-mole with the account every time it pops up.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

The poster may not always be using the same IP address. I can drive down the street to a cafe and use the Internet there, then go to Mickey D's and use theirs. Both have different IP addresses. It could be that Laurel (or Manu, to be more precise) has blocked one or more IP addresses, but they can't get them all.

Besides, in the case of using public access Internet, it wouldn't be right to block the address of a commonly-used IP. That would be denying some people the right to access Lit, who have never done anything to warrant it.

Plus, all I have to do is reboot my router and I get a new IP address. Or I use a public proxy server, new IP address each time I login. There are many ways to change your IP address.

The US isn't like Europe, we aren't assigned static IP addresses unless we are willing to pay extra.

ETA: Sorry drinkz I hadn't gotten to your post yet.

 

[sr71plt]

Not only is the Veronika Kay spammer hitting every New listing story every day now, but (s)he is also going back to the previous day's listings to hit them again. If the Web site was really serious about getting rid of this particular spammer, they would delete the account on a daily basis. Eventually the spammer would see the cost inefficiency of spamming like this.

 

[laptopwriter]

You would think there was something they could do,

I, for one, am getting tired of reporting the creep.

 

[sr71plt]

The administration seems to be right on top of it today. Wiped it from my contest entry even before I saw that it was there.

 

[lovecraft68]

Yup same here, they found the contest link pretty quickly.

 

[RejectReality]

The comments are anonymous, so there's no account to ban.

IP bans are at best a temporary flood control. If it's someone without much technical knowledge or someone simply doing a job from a spam cubicle in a former Russian satellite state, that might stop them for a day or two.

As others have said, getting a new IP is as simple as rebooting most of the time. You have to pay extra to get a static IP in most cases in the U.S. Then you're right back to square one.

One option could be to create a "badword" filter on the comments section that prevents the email address being used from displaying. That could theoretically render the spam impotent.

Until they started using a different email address, which anyone can get in about a minute for free. Back to square one again.

The email being used here doesn't appear in any of the anti-spam databases, so even utilizing one of those services wouldn't help. On a site with as much traffic as Lit, such a service could be cost prohibitive as well.

The mail service used by this spammer has no way to report this type of spamming. They only have the means to report spam via email sent from the address. So, going to the source of the mail provider isn't going to help either. If this address was being used to spam many sites, contacting the mail provider might force them to take action, but the email in question doesn't show up anywhere else in a Google search. That makes Lit a lone voice in the wilderness, which the mail provider will most likely blow off, because it isn't worth their time.

The best possible solution I can think of is to queue all incoming comments on new stories, and not have them display until such time as the author approves them. Most people would not approve the comments, and thus the spam would never see the light of day.

That's probably the only way you're going to deal with this type of spammer. You're going to have to make it not worth their effort to post the comments.

That's a lot of back-end programming and database modification, though.

But, it could have the added benefit of giving authors subject to troll comment onslaughts in LW another tool in their arsenal.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm wondering if Veronika Kay realizes that all comments are registered to the author's page as they are posted? The spammer has been hitting my backlogged stories heavily today. I just delete them when I check in on my page, but it's useless activity for both of us.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The best possible solution I can think of is to queue all incoming comments on new stories, and not have them display until such time as the author approves them. Most people would not approve the comments, and thus the spam would never see the light of day.

That would be effective at stopping spam, but it has its own cons; if the author's absent then nothing's going to get approved at all. It also means legitimate negative comments would require the author to wave them through, which isn't ideal - I support an author's right to delete comments they don't want, but I'm not sure it should be the default setting.

A compromise option is to require pre-approval only for 'suspicious' comments as identified by some sort of Bayesian filter, which can be set up to learn from author choices - e.g. if a particular email address keeps appearing in comments that are classed as spam, the filter learns to be suspicious of comments featuring that address. I've seen it work well on other sites, but unless you can use somebody else's pre-written solution, the programming work required probably rules it out here.

The ideal solution would be to hunt down spammers and kill them, but apparently that's still illegal.

 

[drinkz]

......

 

[RejectReality]

That's why I said new stories. While there's the occasional spam on something older, almost ever spam comment I've ever seen has been on stories within the first week of posting.

Frankly, the amount of useful, legitimate criticism that happens in comments is so minuscule that coupled with the ability of the author to delete them at will, I see no real difference in allowing the author to delete them before they ever see the light of day.

 

[lovecraft68]

The only way a serious effort against spam will be made is if they ever start heavily spamming the GB. That way it will actually be addressed because it will interfere with the fun over there.

 

[laptopwriter]

I see veronika is at it again

So how do we start a campaign to get all the authors to immediately delete her span as soon as it hits?
Any suggestions?

 

[Bramblethorn]

That's why I said new stories. While there's the occasional spam on something older, almost ever spam comment I've ever seen has been on stories within the first week of posting.

Yeah, but if you only moderate the first week of comments, you can bet spammers will switch to older stories.

 

[sr71plt]

Yeah, but if you only moderate the first week of comments, you can bet spammers will switch to older stories.

Already happening. I post stories frequently, so I can see the trends. Last week, this particular spammer was dipping into three-day-old stories for the first time. Nothing posted so far today on mine, and I have a new one up this morning.

As far as a campaign, authors are notified of all comments on their submissions page, so they can see it happen and erase the comment if they desire to.