Russians are spam happy lately.

[zombiesniper]

... of course I'm waiting for this thread to get hit.

If you wish to learn how to hit a thread email me at spammaster@spammy .com for a free pdf instructional booklet.

 

[SquarePeg]

Add another telephone spamming.
So many calls from people claiming to be, amazon,BT, internet provider and that my account will be closed unless I pay xyz by abc.

Just for fun
Years ago I had a firm ring up and say that my wife had agreed that we would have an extension added
I was single at the time
So said yes come on round and start, opps I failed to say that I lived on the seventh floor

They got my coworker's elderly father for $10k a few months ago. Said they were the FBI and needed his help with some type of sting. He bought $10k in gift cards and read them the card numbers and pins over the phone. By the time he realized he had been scammed the cards were all empty and there is absolutely no trail.

 

[Overread]

Add another telephone spamming.
So many calls from people claiming to be, amazon,BT, internet provider and that my account will be closed unless I pay xyz by abc.

Just for fun
Years ago I had a firm ring up and say that my wife had agreed that we would have an extension added
I was single at the time
So said yes come on round and start, opps I failed to say that I lived on the seventh floor

They got my coworker's elderly father for $10k a few months ago. Said they were the FBI and needed his help with some type of sting. He bought $10k in gift cards and read them the card numbers and pins over the phone. By the time he realised he had been scammed the cards were all empty and there is absolutely no trail.

Yeah the elderly, the young, basically anyone vulnerable is their ideal target. They've got lots of nasty ways to get their money. There's also mental tricks they use, even broken English is part of their methods. Sometimes they only need to get a small fragment of your personal details then they'll use a totally different scam service/method to get a few more, then another for a few more etc.... Use that to build a profile and then they've got enough details to register for cards, accounts or such in your name. So you might not even realise that you've been scammed.
There's a few "scammer bait" youtube videos that I've seen as some major retailers are aware that scammers will trick people into buying gift cards. Because of that the scammers put a whole layer of lies in to try and scare the person they are scamming into not disclosing the reason for an abnormally high volume of gift card purchases. "This is a special tax repayment plan that I shouldn't let you use, but if you get caught you'll be fined a lot of money so don't tell them" kind of arguments. They don't sound logical, but once a scammer has a person locked into a trail of thought its one lie upon another that work together well enough that they sound logical within its own "bubble"


It actually hurts small businesses too. One trick they use is to buy computer games online (especially when the game is on a limited sale period). They buy the game in an activation code form so that they've got a code to activate it on any account. They then resell that code once the game's sale period is over and its back up at a normal price. Because they didn't buy the original product with "their money" any sale they make is pure profit for them. They'll even buy games at fullprice and then sell them for way under the market value. Again the purchase is done with stolen money (eg a card or card details or paypal details etc...) whilst the sale goes into their bank account.

However once the theft is detected the card/payment company will shut down and reverse all the charges. This means the company that had products bought off them gets fined as well as have the money that was paid to them returned. Add on top the staff time to process it and small companies can lose a lot of money. This of course affects big companies too, but they often have a healthier profit balance to absorb the costs; plus their size means some areas of finance can be sorted out by staff on retainers/fulltime so it doesn't raise costs nor eat up staff time from other duties. Whilst with a small company it might even be only one or two people running the show so any time spend dealing with the bank is time lost on other duties.

 

[Original katomi]

Sadly the scammers know humans as well, sadly there are still people out there who will buy the line #I should not be doing this# they think that they are getting something no one else is.
Say the post about the chap who thought he was helping FBI added to his problems is that others will prob not help law enforcement
There is a bit of a trend here for peeps to stand right up close at the cash machine...er atm think you call them
If I see someone doing that to my wife I walk over speaking loud to her and face outward
The number of peeps who suddenly decided that they would stand back and give my wife more room...
well if it were converted to GBP pounds coins I could afford the canon 5dmk4 at least lol
You spoke about small business,
My wife ran a small business and the amount of time she and other staff had to spend on scams and money laundering .training days, courses it was just on going

 

[TWX]

All we can ask users to do is when you see spam - report it for the mods. Also don't quote or reply to it. You don't need to say "spam" in the thread and such. Especially since sometimes they will spam an old thread back up to the top so if you start posting too then it stays up even once the spam is removed.

Also if you notice the same account spamming multiple times you only need to report it once - moderator tools let us remove the spammer in one go so as long as we get them once we take EVERYTHING under their account out at once.

A suggestion, based on observation of the latest crop of spammers, in that they appear to create accounts and then instantly start replying to existing threads.

Establish a hoop for them to jump through. Require creating a new thread in the Welcome and Introductions subforum before they're allowed to post in any other subforums. Possibly even require moderator activation such that the only place they can post is the Welcome subforum until a moderator approves them.

 

[Original katomi]

Add my vote to post 20
Could even ask other members who have been active on the forum to help. Save the mods some time and effort.
I would put in a few hours a week to look over needing posts and flag any that needed a second look at
Or report and that were clearly spam. Or does not comply with the welcome thread
The staff do wonders here keeping spam away, helping members and answering questions
If I can help pm me
Katomi

 

[Overread]

All we can ask users to do is when you see spam - report it for the mods. Also don't quote or reply to it. You don't need to say "spam" in the thread and such. Especially since sometimes they will spam an old thread back up to the top so if you start posting too then it stays up even once the spam is removed.

Also if you notice the same account spamming multiple times you only need to report it once - moderator tools let us remove the spammer in one go so as long as we get them once we take EVERYTHING under their account out at once.

A suggestion, based on observation of the latest crop of spammers, in that they appear to create accounts and then instantly start replying to existing threads.

Establish a hoop for them to jump through. Require creating a new thread in the Welcome and Introductions subforum before they're allowed to post in any other subforums. Possibly even require moderator activation such that the only place they can post is the Welcome subforum until a moderator approves them.

The thing is we don't actually get a huge volume of accounts spamming, its more one or two that slip through the auto-blocks. They just tend to spam. The problem with "moderators must approve posts" or restricting people to certain sections is that they tend to have a bad effect on new members.

Spambots are typically not actually bots anymore. With Capatcha and such the spammers are real people, so they tend to be able to get past "must post in welcome section first" limits. Just like they can spam "nice photo" 20 times to get past a post limit before they can drop a link.
Similarly many new people often want to reply to a running thread or ask a specific question or get into the community in more than one post. So curtailing them with "moderators must approve first posts" tends to put a LOT of people off very fast. It's like walking into a shop and getting hit with a 20 minute questionnaire before you're allowed to shop. Sure its not terrible and you can get past it, but chances are you don't want to walk back in that shop. In this day and age where FB has stolen many of the new people for forums (heck many people get on the net, get on facebook and never leave) its better for us to keep the place much more open to new people rather than clamp down for a tiny number of spambots that take moments to remove.

 

[Original katomi]

Re post 22
Never thought of those issues or other problems.
Offer of help still stands if you want it.

 

[TWX]

The thing is we don't actually get a huge volume of accounts spamming, its more one or two that slip through the auto-blocks. They just tend to spam. The problem with "moderators must approve posts" or restricting people to certain sections is that they tend to have a bad effect on new members.

Perhaps, but as someone that tends to subscribe to the threads posted-in, getting tons of e-mail for replies that are just spam is very off-putting, and browsing the forums to see reply after reply after reply from just one account¹ can be off-putting too.

1. sorry Derrel!