I saw 2 spam posts today, the first by
Blue Print had no links in the post itself (as we already check for that for new users with no posts) but included a spam link in the title.
The second by
Whisted isted was posted and then edited to add a spam link in the post.
So I will work on some further modifications tonight to prevent these cases, as ideally forcing users to make a number of posts to start a new thread isn't as nice a solution for the legitimate users.
I will post a follow-up when the changes have been implemented, as it's only after we see what the spammers are doing that we can add in 'checks' to prevent their various methods
Thanks for the suggestion
@Jeff!
Update: Ok, I have now made the following changes:
- Changed the title of this thread, so new (spammy) users can't easily see and read it
- Removed the ability for new users to Edit their posts (to add spam links) until they are promoted to a Member (requires 1 post plus 1 'like' received)
- Added a check so that new users can't type common URL formats in thread titles (we can update this as needed should other formats arise, right now it covers http, https, .com, .net and .org)
Once again, this will be a work-in-progress... the above will definitely curb
more spammers than before but depending on how determined they are to spam we'll have to revisit this thread and make updates to our system accordingly