Can't you stop the spam ?

[samak]

With all the techies on this site, can't you stop these idiots who keep posting spam messages about etradinglife on almost every thread ?

[supersuezy24]

I have told the Snag to bog off twice now...

[supersuezy24]

I didn't say snag i said tw4t

[rowanwitch]

gives keen reporters something to do....

[Safiya]

whats etradinglife? just report them if they are spamming, they'll soon be booted

[samak]

I reported them twice yesterday when every damn thread was polluted with their rubbish. Nothing appears to have changed.

[archeraddict]

http://safeweb.norton...?url=etradinglife.com

I googled them and they may be a con site or download botnet if you open their website.

[Safiya]

well ive nowt much to do all day... ill be ab stalker for a couple of hours if i see em :)

[Safiya]

LOL and as if by magic one appeared....

[supersuezy24]

Gone..muhahahahahahahaha

[redcrx]

how can AB decide automatically what is spam and what is a genuine reply with a website link?
cant be done, which is why there is a report button for spam.

[samak]

So it's not only annoying but potentially harmful to users of this site.
Not good PR, site owners !

[Safiya]

tytyythjhy <<<< that ones banned now :) aww and i offered to do ninja on them in my report :(((((

[AB Editor]

LOL, you're asking us to catch criminals before they commit a crime?

They were dealt with quite quickly I thought... All done within 30 minutes? Not too bad is it?

A little insight to how it works:

We only know what is going on when there is a report. Lets assume you reported it straight away Samak, this takes you 2 minutes.

From the point of entry this generates a report for us, these are generated every 5 minutes. If your report just missed the last generation cycle you'll have to wait 5 minutes before it gets to us.

We do other things besides police the site, we check the reports as often as we can - but sometimes we only catch reports after they've been sitting there for a while, ten minutes maybe? That's 17 minutes between you making the report and an editor seeing it.

Then we have to inspect it, which takes a minute or so depending on page speed and similar - granted a spammer is easy to spot so we don't have to think too hard about it, but we like to check they're not just a confused user.

This is why sometimes it takes us up to 30 minutes to take action - but we're rarely over that 30 minutes!

User mods, if they're about, often beat us to this kind of thing (although, of course, they don't see any reports so are "blind") - their help is invaluable.

[samak]

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation Ed.

It appeared to be the same spammer using 2 different usernames. Couldn't their IP address be blocked as well as the username to make it more difficult for them?

[jno]

IP addresses are easily changed.

http://www.ip-address.org/change-ip.php

[starone]

Would someone please explain to me what is a spammer - or spam? Apart from tinned cooked meat that is!