[SuperSonic]

keth and st20113 are spammers! Ryan, can we as forum members do something about the whole spammer issue? Or is this an administrator (your) job to get rid of such annoyances on our lovely (and delightfully horrifying ) forum?

I would like to do a lot about this issue, but not sure of what I can do.

Help!

[Raven]

I logged on the other day and there was so many spam posts I was amazed. They really don't care what type of forum they spam. It's hard to keep the spammers out. At least they could leave some Halloween themed spam..

[ghostface]

I know same thing happened to me! I was VERY disgusted! I hate spammers.

[Zombie Pumpkins!]

Sorry about any distasteful spam you've had to see. I stop on here a couple time each day, at least. So it's usually cleaned up within 1/2 a day. I also periodically go through the database and look for posts, signatures, and profiles that contain links, removing any that are spam or otherwise sketchy.

I've recently been working on an upgrade to the forum. Trying to hammer out the layout to make it fit with the style of this site a bit better. I'm hoping the upgraded tools will help keep the spam at bay a bit better.

[mesmark]

Ryan - It seems a little weird and very aggressive. Usually they just add a few posts. You may have been added to a database somewhere with the answer to your security question. I would change that and maybe you won't be bombarded.

[Zombie Pumpkins!]

mesmark - certainly couldn't hurt, I suppose. I'll change the security code for registration, and see if that helps for now, while I work on the new forum.

[monstermash]

I just got 62 topic reply notification emails!! I thought that was strange seeing as most of the topics havent been unearthed in a long time. Ive had the odd email like that before, maybe 1 or 2 at a time but never as many as 62! Any ideas Ryan? Am I being pestered by a cyber poltergeist? Anyone else have this problem?

[Zombie Pumpkins!]

A spammer is to blame for that. They joined and posted their advertisement on many old topics, which triggered those reply notification emails. I quickly wiped out all their spam posts. So despite the notification that there were replies, there would be no new posts to view after I cleaned things up. Sorry about that confusion and email inconvenience!

[monstermash]

Aha, ok, no worries Ryan. Just making sure it wasn't a virus at my end.

[GUS]

Folk, though I don't exactly post here nowadays it still bugs me that the spammers have gained so much ground of late, a veritable deluge, especially nasty were the p_rn shots ..not good for a site we deem family friendly, I know my own daughter spends plenty of time here..

Whilst I tend to use my own critical eye as to 0 posting spammers here (with a pretty good hit rate) I've recently been using this link to validate who & what I deem to be out for their own purpose.

Therefore I suggest you copy & paste a spammer moniker from the 10 list of most recent members onto the search via this link.

http://www.stopforumspam.com/search

A great database of verified spammers worldwide.
Perhaps keep it as an open thread to show who has been reported so Ryan doesn't get multiple messages & they may then be expunged from the forum with little or no incursion.

Have a good 2012 Halloween

[Zombie Pumpkins!]

I appreciate the concern and desire to help. Although I will also say, as the administrator of this site, it's my duty really to keep the forum clean and free of spam. Trust me, I monitor this sort of thing on a daily basis, and take note of anything that seems suspicious.

Currently, new forum accounts have to go through my authorization before a post can go public. So you shouldn't be seeing much junk, if any. Spammers might try to join, but will not be seen on the main forum. Any admin work I do behind the scenes will be fairly invisible, and should not of any consequence to your enjoyment of the forum.

So don't feel that you have to monitor members or report them all to me. I see it all. My goal is for this forum to be a place to have fun, and talk about pumpkin carving and all that is related. Making lists of spammers isn't necessary, plus it's like giving the bully attention. So trust that I have it under control and just have fun chatting.

[GUS]

I'm not keen on Izzy seeing any more porn-grot Ryan, whilst she's a sensible kid & yelled me that something was wrong it made for "an experience" ..luckily we're not backward in educating our kid so she knows that theres all kinds of a-holes on the internet, in life & as a result of crappy parenting at her school, she even understands self defence (legally defined uk variant..something I anticipate "Doh" would approve of) much to the anguish of her school who try to stop her defending herself when bullying takes place, sadly as a deaf kid it's all too frequent (when she feels no other option than to punch / jam an elbow in a kids face & make it count aiming to break the nose)...worst punishment she could get is 15 minutes loss of priveliges (sucky pointless punishment in comparison & clearly worth it).

We're (Izz & myself) merely thinking, what if it's a bit of a shrieker (non reg who'd shriek over various media platforms about something not under your control & not endorsed by the site) ..their kid having witnessed (or not mazola oiled up men acting out fellatio on each other kinda thing, ..Izz simply shouted "loadsa gay men images, something's wrong on ZP" ( I was mowing the lawn in the garden, busy street ..you can imagine the rest ..she doesn't know about messaging yet, (& i've discouraged that aspect of social media & pm'ing having only just got a mobile phone at 8yrs (well 3..in a fortnight, it was a fast learning curve) ..she'll be scoping out the site via her smart phone from hereon in.

I simply think personally) that as you have folk from so many time-zones it'd be easier this way especially when you are up to your neck in redesigns or maintenence over Halloween build up months, the amount of sleeping spammers on the site is quite substantial over a matter of months, or even days ..if it's a busy patch, especially when you have a core of regulars popping in.

No worries.

cheers all.

[Zombie Pumpkins!]

My sincere apologies for that regretful adult-oriented spam post that your daughter witnessed. The first instance of such a thing being posted here I believe, it was shortly lived before deletion.

Since then I've added restrictions on how new members can post, and I am working on the implementation of more anti-spam technologies that will further improve the issue automatically. In other words, asking my members to run checks on new members won't serve too much purpose, other than eating up their time.

Perhaps you might call me naive, but as the website administrator here, my goal is to be able to welcome members of our community with a promise of a reasonably safe and pleasant conversation experience. Rather than announcing that disruptive spam is a foregone guarantee and that the burden of policing the membership is on the user.

That said, the internet can indeed be a wild jungle. Parenting in the digital age presents all new challenges, when trying to protect young eyes. This concern is especially great in areas open to user-submitted content, like a messaging forum.

For this reason, it's worth noting that this forum, and the overall site in general, contain these (content and age related) claims which members consent to upon registration:

While the administrators and moderators of this forum will attempt to remove or edit any generally objectionable material as quickly as possible, it is impossible to review every message. Therefore you acknowledge that all posts made to these forums express the views and opinions of the author and not the administrators, moderators or webmaster (except for posts by these people) and hence will not be held liable.

I agree to these terms and am over or exactly 13 years of age.

We do not knowingly collect names, e-mail addresses or mailing address from children under age thirteen without obtaining verifiable consent from that child's parent, and giving the parent the option to remove their child's information from the applicable database. It is up to the child under thirteen to inform ZombiePumpkins.com of his or her age before submitting any information to the website.

[Ajax]

Welcome back Gus. Guess i missed the whole super spam incident good luck getting it under control Ryan. I have noticed it being pretty bad this off season, but have never seen anything obscene.

[ghostface]

I actually got on that 1 day and saw all those posts. When I saw the titles of them and saw that it was not Halloween related I realized it was probably spam, afraid I was going to get a virus I did not click on them. This is probably a stupid question but spam can give you a virus, correct?