JesterX (Jens Clever)

[TheBramble]

Surely there's a way to automatically trap anyone recently joined who then hits loads of threads with an ad. OK, he/she has done a bit of work in making it 'look' like a 'by the way', but come on...

We've had a JesterX attack!!!!

 

[Bigbusiness]

I had to laugh when I read this though:-

"Easy-To-Copy System And You Too, Can NOW Profit From The Stock Market Insanely!"

 

[Sharky]

You'd think there was a simple way - but it's always going to be difficult to differentiate the spammers from new members who jump in and starting making lots of posts, without some sort of human intervention. Perhaps you can assume that anyone new who posts more than x times in x hours or mins, is a spammer. Going to have to give this some thought.

 

[dsmodi]

. Perhaps you can assume that anyone new who posts more than x times in x hours or mins, is a spammer. Going to have to give this some thought.

As a starting point, how about such posters being flagged up.... that way at least there is some sort of filtering process in place - until someone thinks of something better....

 

[TheBramble]

As a starting point, how about such posters being flagged up.... that way at least there is some sort of filtering process in place - until someone thinks of something better....

Flagged up how and for what purpose?

What is the 'filtering process' that takes place and how does it help avoid the situation we had with jesterx?

I appreciate you state 'as a starting point', but your comments don't appear to have any context or content.

More detail please.

 

[dsmodi]

Perhaps you can assume that anyone new who posts more than x times in x hours or mins, is a spammer. Going to have to give this some thought.

heya brambie old bean!

right, from sharky's above comment and from my limited (very!) knowledge of programming, I think it should be relatively easy and of course feasible for him to program this info, whereby someone who is new (as in joined in the last 2 days for example) have their postings monitored. Then, if they already start posting frequently - perhaps the way you or soccy (old bean) do - and i really really do not mean any offence in that - then a moderator such as sharky can be notified by the server/computer/program....it is this notification that I mean "flagged"...then, a quick perusal of their postings should easily indicate whether they are jersterx'ing or not and if so then appropriate action undertaken....

The times and postings I have indicated are arbitrary - of course the moderators and those in the know will have better suggestions....

Also, a point to note: I was merely "expanding" on what sharky wrote as I got the impression he wasn't going to implement this yet...but I may be wrong in my understanding, so sharky - no offence intended with you niether matey...

hope the context is clear from the content now brambie....if not, then do let me know...

cheers

 

[TheBramble]

I understand now.

But this would require manual monitoring and a worldwide base of mods covering all timezones (don't think we're there just yet).

An automated system (if any) would be a lot easier. The most recent 'attack' from the akbank bunch was just a couple (AFAIAA) of posts and probably would have fallen short of any automated action criteria.

It's probably not worth the extra effort for t2w in programming a solution (or even designing a solution) unless the situation became a lot worse than is currently the case.

 

[trendie]

since most spamming is "usually" the same text posted on several threads in quick succession.....

could not the size of the text, ie, number of words or characters, be used, and compared against each other ?
if they are similar in size, then chances are it could be a cut-and-pasted text, and more likely to be spam.

this way, many posts by same poster, should contain a mix of different words and phrases, resulting in different sized posts, and these coud be filtered "out" ( ie, not looked at )

this approach, if workable, would be applied to perhaps the first hundred posts of new members.

hopefully this makes sense and is constructive.

 

[frugi]

Good idea trendie but that wouldn't have nabbed Jester since he was kind enough to post a little differently each time. It could also result in, say, an urgent question that a member has posted on two or three fora being deleted. I'd like to prevent anyone with fewer than ten posts from posting a URL, and that is codeable, but, once again, it could prevent an honest n00b from posting an innocent URL.

Any automatic system is likely to have its flaws, which is why we're here - if, in my case at least, admittedly a little slow to act on occasion.

Regarding the flagging idea, well, you members do an excellent job of that already. No spam seems to go unnoticed for more than a few hours and you're always kind enough to alert us to it, for which thanks.

 

[dsmodi]

Yo brambie - pls note as per below....

But this would require manual monitoring and a worldwide base of mods covering all timezones (don't think we're there just yet).

Don't agree mate .... we can stick to the UK times if u like, and let those awake while we're sleeping do what they want, and get nabbed within hours - at least most of our waking hours would be covered....also, not THAT MUCH of this jesterx'ing type of thingy happens, so this is enough precaution for now anyway..

An automated system (if any) would be a lot easier. The most recent 'attack' from the akbank bunch was just a couple (AFAIAA) of posts and probably would have fallen short of any automated action criteria.

Automated would not be so simple to program - the flagging like this is relatively easy to put together....it would prob be worth the effort.

It's probably not worth the extra effort for t2w in programming a solution (or even designing a solution) unless the situation became a lot worse than is currently the case.

you know what ? I think you could be right here - do something only if it gets worse...cool!

and the double cool thing is that WE FINALLY AGREE ON SOMETHING!