Post by Seri on Jul 19, 2012 3:56:01 GMT
That idea sounds good, Marie, and I’ve seen similar solutions tried out on other forums, but I wasn’t a participating member on those so I have no idea how effective it is in the long term.
But the whole problem is very vexing and a real headache for all forum staff.
Like a perpetual motion machine, a perfect spam filter cannot exist, and spam registration guards can be far too over-sensitive. I had to register manually with a forum last year after I’d been refused entry. Turns out that the new Username I’d chosen at random was on a blacklist.
Three years ago I was blocked from registering with another forum, for no known reason. I eventually tracked down their spam security providers and discovered that my ISP address was on their blacklist for no reason. It was easy to have it removed, and I have had no similar problems since, but I’ve discovered that SRG’s err on the side of caution, and large numbers of innocents like me end up having to defend ourselves against false charges.
I also hear there’s talk of automatically assuming that everyone with a @gmail.com address is a spammer, as so many spam accounts live there.
Still, being the victim of only two instances of false positives in all these years is a price worth paying if using these services means a higher and less stressful level of protection for forums
But on a lighter note........first the furniture and then the Jerseys and the Lingerie.........and the text was certainly computer-generated, as Ra noted on another thread. But was I the only one who couldn’t resist actually reading some of it? A thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters in a thousand years could not have done better..........much like reading ‘Ulysses’ or Dadaist poetry..........fascinating really, and not entirely gobbledegook, but also, oddly enough, little to do with selling those products either
I’m assuming that they’re designed to contain popular search terms, but as they’re fragments of sentences and not just random words, does anyone know how these ramblings are generated? Just curious
But the whole problem is very vexing and a real headache for all forum staff.
Like a perpetual motion machine, a perfect spam filter cannot exist, and spam registration guards can be far too over-sensitive. I had to register manually with a forum last year after I’d been refused entry. Turns out that the new Username I’d chosen at random was on a blacklist.
Three years ago I was blocked from registering with another forum, for no known reason. I eventually tracked down their spam security providers and discovered that my ISP address was on their blacklist for no reason. It was easy to have it removed, and I have had no similar problems since, but I’ve discovered that SRG’s err on the side of caution, and large numbers of innocents like me end up having to defend ourselves against false charges.
I also hear there’s talk of automatically assuming that everyone with a @gmail.com address is a spammer, as so many spam accounts live there.
Still, being the victim of only two instances of false positives in all these years is a price worth paying if using these services means a higher and less stressful level of protection for forums
But on a lighter note........first the furniture and then the Jerseys and the Lingerie.........and the text was certainly computer-generated, as Ra noted on another thread. But was I the only one who couldn’t resist actually reading some of it? A thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters in a thousand years could not have done better..........much like reading ‘Ulysses’ or Dadaist poetry..........fascinating really, and not entirely gobbledegook, but also, oddly enough, little to do with selling those products either
I’m assuming that they’re designed to contain popular search terms, but as they’re fragments of sentences and not just random words, does anyone know how these ramblings are generated? Just curious