Spam

[leporello]

Search engines will on see links in body posts, not in signatures, where forums require that you be logged in to see signatures.

Some forum spam bots create fake signatures using underscores or hyphens in the hope of fooling moderators into thinking the links won't be indexed by search engines. In my opinion such links are pretty obviously spam but perhaps the trick gets by some people.


______________________________________
Example of a fake signature

Lol. had me fooled

[Tim]

I've only just seen this thread but agree with the OP. Today this same guy posts on half a dozen threads on the forum, and just wastes my time - because he writes utter tosh.

As for signatures - I personally think they should be removed. I hang out a lot at webmasterworld and what I love about that forum is they have zero tolerance on spam/self promotion. I know things are different here and sometimes people need to post URLs, but signatures just invite too many spammers and time wasters.

[leporello]

Yes. IT actually depresses me when I load up PAL and see every reply is some unneeded rubbish from XXX.

[Holis]

If you see spam or what you feel is spam, report the posts. We have very active mods and will not tolerate this rubbish.

[xYassassinYx]

So many idiots joining lately posting ridiculous comments just talking nonsense to promote their signature links.

Is there any way to make signatures unavailable until someone has joined for a week or something?

[Newjabber]

Is there any way to make signatures unavailable until someone has joined for a week or something?

50 posts or something, and if its lots of garbish posts then INSTA BAN.
I agree that there are way too many spammers at the moment.

[leporello]

yeah its getting ridiculous at this stage. The SEO forum has gone to absolute sh*t.

[Jeremy]

I agree with what Holis said, just hit the report spam pic and usually the post is deleted within minutes. We do have spam registration plugins applied to help prevent bots, however I'll see if I can find some even more sophisticated spam prevention stuff.

The hard part is when physical people actually register for the forum and post. What I have seen lately is that many people are trying to boost their post count with sh** posts just so they can post a sales thread or whatever. I can remove those restrictions if you guys want to avoid those.

Likewise if you think we need more mods I am open to that as well. I'm all ears.

[xYassassinYx]

A few more trusted mods is a great idea I think, everyone gets busy so having a few more mods means more eyes to catch the spammers.

Just pathetic that they post nonsense, starting to think they are from digital point getting paid by people for backlinks lol

[CK]

Not sure if more mods will help the situation tbh...Its hard to know whether someone is posting short post and is a legit member or spammer till later on. TBH there are more posts posted in wrong areas ie the main forum than there are spammers.

Anyway until we get an idea who they are, we cant exactly ban everyone who makes 10 short replies. I have been deleting sigs from people within their profiles though