Spam

[ouchthathurt]

Good morning all, 

many thanks to all who have reported the spam appearing recently on the forum, special shout out to @elmoputney and @InteraX who gave me a pleasurable 10min banning them all! 
 

please keep reporting them as soon as you see them and the mod team will get them rid. 
 

many thanks! 
 

ouchthathurt (Matt) 

[ouchthathurt]

If I had as many takes as spammers recently, I would have had the season of a lifetime already! 🙄

[jules007]

seems each time i log on the most recent spammers have been dealt with, sadly at times forums just get hit with this rubbish 

[InteraX]

Do we know where the spammers are coming from? Can they be geo blocked?

What about new user moderation?

Whilst I know this will put more work onto you moderators, it seems to be getting worse ATM.

[salokcinnodrog]

1 hour ago, InteraX said:

Do we know where the spammers are coming from? Can they be geo blocked?

What about new user moderation?

Whilst I know this will put more work onto you moderators, it seems to be getting worse ATM.

I have set accounts up so that new members have to use a validation email to join. So it looks like they were human accounts rather than 'bot' accounts.

If one person at a time joins, we can keep an eye on the posts, or if the email address is suspect can put on post moderation. However when we get a whole office signing up to spam it is difficult to keep up.

The joys of VPN's can make the best laid plans of banned IP addresses, banned emails and providers worthless.

[InteraX]

On 13/04/2026 at 09:23, salokcinnodrog said:

I have set accounts up so that new members have to use a validation email to join. So it looks like they were human accounts rather than 'bot' accounts.

If one person at a time joins, we can keep an eye on the posts, or if the email address is suspect can put on post moderation. However when we get a whole office signing up to spam it is difficult to keep up.

The joys of VPN's can make the best laid plans of banned IP addresses, banned emails and providers worthless.

That's great to limit account creation, but can you set new users to moderated (all posts need to be approved by a modertor). That may be the only way to stop the current issues.

It looks like the spammers have found a new way to hit the forum en-mass.

[jules007]

Something needs to be put in place, the spam is getting pretty bad

[newmarket]

Morning Gents . I’m a moderator on a football fans forum and I’ve had exactly this problem . 
we have set in place a system where all new applicant members have to have their details ratified by a Mod and then have their application activated . 
 

The majority of new applications come from Eastern European spammers so their IP addresses give the game away straight away .

Those that are not so obvious get sent a related question by email to answer .

you’d be surprised how many Romanians think Bobby Charlton used to play for West Ham 🤣.

It means I have spend an evening once a month cleaning up the Spammer new account applications but it’s better than spending your whole life deleting and banning , which is what was happening before .

Genuine applications usually make themselves heard on the forum pretty much straight away and the obvious spammers can usually be spotted by their ridiculously Eastern European usernames .