What is going on with all these airline posts?
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It sure feels like it, my email was flooded with over 80 Fool generated junk emails.
The Captain
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Bots creating new accounts and posting spam. Because it’s the free side, things are fairly wide open and they found us. I’m looking at the settings to see what, if anything, we can lock down.
Most of them are caught by the spam filters, some sneak through. I delete and block the accounts and IP addresses when they show up.
You can ignore them or keep flagging them, I’ll catch them either way.
I’m basically playing whack-a-mole right now - appreciate the support in flagging them!
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Can you block opening new accounts for few days.. Also, I thought new accounts are opened by invitation. So you should be able to trace the source.
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Maybe…that might dissuade them. There is also a new SPAM module I’m going to activate and try.
Invitations are allowed but not required so that won’t work.
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I just changed the security settings to ‘new users must be approved’ which should slow down the posts. (some users will have gotten through before this - I’ll just delete those as they post).
If you know of someone legit joining , just post here so I can know to expect them and I’ll approve them.
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What security module you are using? Many provide mechanism to deal with bots. Also, are they coming from a specific IP’s? or range? For me, I am getting flagged based on their posts in Berkshire board. If they are just focused on few boards, then that should allow you to further filter and block…
I know it is a nuisance. Good luck.
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They set this site up with Akismet for spam detection…I think it’s been getting weaker as AI gets better. There are a few other options, I just need to get with the hosting team to configure them.
The vast majority are getting caught by the initial filter…there were 243 flagged posts this morning and I think only a handful came from your or The Captain. The rest, the filter caught and pushed into my queue.
It mostly happens over night so we’ll see what happens tonight. I’ll probably wake up to 50 new user requests but that’s better than them getting in to actually post.
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Got only two emails! 
The Captain
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