Help me fight evil.

For great justice!

There is a sneaky spammer loose on the boards. Over the past week or so I have removed many posts by this person/bot/whatever, but it's hard to track because their method is insidious and clever. Here's what's up:

At first, the post seems like a normal Construct post. IT IS ALWAYS ON TOPIC TO THE THREAD...

<img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/2el6s10.png">

"How is that possible?" you ask? "Is this crazy spammer actually using Construct? Did they go so far as to learn to make games in order to weasel their way into our community?" No, they did not. The answer is deceptively simple:

<img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/2ihvu4g.png">

They simply select part of a post from earlier in the thread and copypasta. If you're just skimming through, you're likely not to notice anything out of place. They even copied one of Ashley's posts in one thread... funny how a newbie with only one post is suddenly a developer commenting on the future of Construct.

Bastards.

All offenders so far have just one post. All of them post in current topics (no thread necromancy). The spam links so far have all gone to clothing or jewelry sites (DO NOT EVER CLICK ON THE SPAM LINKS! We don't want to feed them).

It's getting tough to keep track, so please... if you see any posts like this then click the report button. You'd be doing the forum a great service

Evil spam bot technology is advancing at a rapid pace. Why someone would click on his sig is beyond me.. Who would actually buy something like clothing or jewelry from a sig link... Futile spammers. I'll keep an eye out for this sneaky bot.

Wow, spammers are reaching an all new low..

Evil spam bot technology is advancing at a rapid pace. Why someone would click on his sig is beyond me.. Who would actually buy something like clothing or jewelry from a sig link... Futile spammers. I'll keep an eye out for this sneaky bot.

Well the spamers usually don't own those sites, they are just using some sort of affiliates program.

Talk about evil.

The site owners can deny all responsibility, and the spamers can simply create a new account even if the site owners were to terminate the account for violating tos.

The site owners can deny all responsibility, and the spamers can simply create a new account even if the site owners were to terminate the account for violating tos.

Why not set the forum to disable signatures for anyone with less than 10 or 20 posts?

I'm sure they'd get bored and go somewhere else.

Or, set the forum filter to kill parts of their affiliate addresses, so that the links are dead.

Krush.

Why not set the forum to disable signatures for anyone with less than 10 or 20 posts?

I dunno if this can be done v<img src="http://www.scirra.com/phpBB3/images/smilies/icon_confused.gif">v

Anyway, that would have to be something for Ash (or RICH or DAVID) to do. But it sounds good to me... except for the part where every new member starts a thread asking why their sig doesn't work

If you're just skimming through, you're likely not to notice anything out of place. They even copied one of Ashley's posts in one thread... funny how a newbie with only one post is suddenly a developer commenting on the future of Construct.

~Sol

If you're just skimming through, you're likely not to notice anything out of place. They even copied one of Ashley's posts in one thread... funny how a newbie with only one post is suddenly a developer commenting on the future of Construct.

~Sol

I c wut u did thar

These must be real people, unless the bots have gotten through the human check I put on a while ago. Damn, it's a weird world when it's economically viable for people to work pasting links in to a forum. Thanks for the clean-up work Deadeye, and good advice about the report button (it shows up red for admin/mods so we can check it out right away).

These must be real people, unless the bots have gotten through the human check I put on a while ago.

lookie here

*facepalm*

*facepalm*

*fixed

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Captain Picard's head is looking a little lumpy there...

I actually thought it was ackbar's head.