Hello!
I still get notifications from this forum, and lately there has been quite a lot of spam getting through. Does anyone feel responsible for looking into this problem? Perhaps some settings could be tweaked to prevent the rather uniform-looking spam that is hitting us now.
All the best,
Antonin
I just checked my spam folder and didn't see anything related. Perhaps it's just going to moderators?
Is anyone else seeing anything similar to Antonin?
I'm not a moderator, so can't help with the solution. When this forum was set up, only a selection of the former email list moderators were given moderator privileges here.
Tom
Only the moderator received those emails; most were blocked by the Discourse spam detector before they reached distribution to all Discourse subscribers.
I go through the report every few days to clear the backlog.
Happy to onboard a new administrator if there are volunteers.
If the spam is coming in through a public OpenRefine instance, I’d restrict access or put it behind authentication first. Also worth checking the server logs to see whether the traffic is coming from the same source/IP range so you can block it upstream.
Someone replied to a topic you are Watching.
If the spam is coming in through a public OpenRefine instance, I’d restrict access or put it behind authentication first.
That's an odd turn of phrase. There's no way that OpenRefine could be the source of forum spam and access to the forum already requires registration and authentication.
On a related note, something I've noted recently is a series of slightly "off" posts which are rather generic and don't say much specifically. I wonder if they are part of some AI bot's long range reputation building campaign.
Tom
Following @tfmorris comment, I reviewed the recent activity from @Amy_Casper.
There is a consistent pattern of replying to older topics with fairly generic comments that mostly restate points already made or add little to the discussion. I also reviewed the account activity: 12 posts were created after viewing only 13 topics.
While reviewing those posts, I also found one that revived an old SQLite support topic to recommend and link to an unrelated third-party online service. I have deleted that post.
Taken together, this looks less like normal participation in the forum and more like an account being used to build activity before posting external links. I have therefore silenced the account. I have silenced the account for now.
@Amy_Casper, if this is a false positive, please reach out to the moderator team. We can review the account and reactivate it.
If others notice similar patterns, please flag the posts so they are easier for the moderation team to review.