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Bertram31.com General Bulletin Board
Re: spam
Posted By: Capt Patrick McCrary In Response To: Re: spam (andre fourrier - Louisiana)
Date: Tuesday, 6 June 2006, at 11:35 p.m.
First, it's easy to block email spam, but even the most efficient email spam blocker can't catch it all. I use several email spam blocking routines which dump and filter out over 250 spam mails a day. Even then I have to manually dump, at the very least, 50 or so each day that get past.
Blocking spam from a bulletin board is a whole different ball game and the only effective way to even try to block it is to screen everyone who attempts to make a post. Even without a username requirement, a password is necessary at the very least.
The inconvenience of having to log in before a post can be made is far greater than seeing a few entries per day on the board index. Just electing not to click on a very obvious spam message requires zero effort on any of our parts.
While it may be a a few minutes to a few hours, each of these spam messages is being manually deleted by me. There IS NO message behind the obvious index listing once I delete it. Just try one of them and see for yourself...
As stated before, I can't delete the initial post from the index without causing a possible melt down of the whole index which would leave all past messages unobtainable and forever lost, even to the search function.
Unquestionably, it irritates me as much as it does anybody else, probably more so since I am the one who dumps the actual message from the server. I have looked into the various ways to put a halt to this guy that's currently running his spam software & it still comes down to passwords and a totally different style of bulletin board.
This site is a high profile site that is highly ranked by every search engine on the Internet. Current stats show that we get around 3/4 of a million hits per month and serve up around 1/4 million pages to over 11,437 visitors, who create over 40,000 individual visits per month.
You can't have that many folks coming through the door without an insect flying or crawling in too.
On the other hand, our current spammer posts his crap about 5 time a day. That's around 150 post per month. We get around 50 legitimate post per day which is over 1,500 post per month from the Faithful. So OK, that's around 10% which takes zero percent of the Faithful's energy not to click on that post.
What's easier and less inconvenient? Not wasting energy to either click on an obvious spam message & wasting no energy to even discuss the futility of eradicating something that is as much a part of Internet life as ants, roaches, & mosquitoes OR logging on with a password every time you want to make a post?
Only a few of you have made it clear that you're irritated and want something more proactive done, but I can assure you that what will work is possibly far more irritating than casting a blind eye to the occasional spam post.
We've enjoyed over six years of almost no spam on the board. Let's not get our panties in wad because we have a spammer in our midst at the present.
We have far greater issues to deal with, like ethanol, hurricanes, rendezvous', restoring classic Bertrams, fishing tournaments, etc.
Rest assured, I am not happy with this guy in our sanctuary at the moment, but at the same time I'm not ready to diagnose him as a terminal cancer and order up chemotherapy. If the time comes to do that then I will, but I don't deem this as that time yet...
Best regards,
Patrick
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