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Thread: Spam messages with links

  1. #11
    8x10, 5x7, 4x5, et al Leigh's Avatar
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    Re: Spam messages with links

    One simple solution is to prevent posting of any active links anywhere on LFPF.

    This would be a simple change.
    There's already an option on the composition page to "Automatically parse links in text".
    Disable that everywhere by default and remove that option from the page.

    All browsers I know of will directly access a link that's presented as a text string.
    You highlight the text string, then right-click and select "open in a new tab" or similar option.

    The advantage of this is you see the real URL, not some phony text string.

    - Leigh
    If you believe you can, or you believe you can't... you're right.

  2. #12

    Join Date
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    Re: Spam messages with links

    That would also affect e.g. Flickr links and it could also affect image links depending on the implementation. The former could be acceptable (although it would cripple some discussions); the latter would obviously be beyond reasonable.

  3. #13

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    Re: Spam messages with links

    Quote Originally Posted by Leigh View Post
    One simple solution is to prevent posting of any active links anywhere on LFPF.
    This is an excessively harsh reaction to a minor nuisance.

  4. #14
    Mark Sawyer's Avatar
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    Re: Spam messages with links

    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Fromm View Post
    This is an excessively harsh reaction to a minor nuisance.
    Agreed.
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

  5. #15
    Moderator
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    Re: Spam messages with links

    Agreed. We're not going there.

  6. #16
    8x10, 5x7, 4x5, et al Leigh's Avatar
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    Re: Spam messages with links

    Quote Originally Posted by Oren Grad View Post
    Agreed. We're not going there.
    It's the moderators who defined this as a problem in the first place.

    - Leigh
    If you believe you can, or you believe you can't... you're right.

  7. #17
    multiplex
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    local
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    Re: Spam messages with links

    i like the links
    and the spam, its good fried.
    and now i have watched
    some great sporting events too

  8. #18
    Moderator
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    Re: Spam messages with links

    Quote Originally Posted by Leigh View Post
    It's the moderators who defined this as a problem in the first place.

    - Leigh
    We did?

    Rick "okay, I get the subtext now" Denney

  9. #19

    Join Date
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    Re: Spam messages with links

    The most egregious spammers that plague this and other forums are not just trying to sell crap, in many cases what looks like one thing is actually something else - for example, the link says that you will get to stream a football game or something, but the actual link points to a PDF file, which in many cases can contain malicious code which will infect and take over your computer. Or, it will place a bot on your computer, which some bad dude can control at the time of his or her own choosing to launch a botnet distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack anywhere on the Internet, just like the big DDoS attack on 21 October. So these spammers that include fake links to malicious documents or websites are not just irritating, they are downright dangerous to your computer and potentially many others.

    One solution is to run a scanning routine which examines the contents of every posting on a bulletin board. All you do is plug in some keywords to look for (which shouldn't be too hard to identify) and if it finds the keyword(s), it quarantines the post, disables the html link, or just deletes the post altogether. With even more advanced logic, it could only scan posts from newly registered users, or users with very low post counts (< 5) for example. It wouldn't be that hard to do, if the bulletin software allowed for some customized code (PHP, Python, Javascript or whatever) and a mechanism to execute it. Unfortunately, I don't think this forum software can handle that, but if it did, the scanning routine and the rules it follows could be fairly trivial to write. Just my $0.03...

  10. #20

    Join Date
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    Re: Spam messages with links

    Isn't it possible to block messages with links posted by "members" with fewer than 10, say, post count?

    EDIT: I just read the prior post. Apparently my great idea has already been suggested!

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