topic Re: Why all these spam posts about movies? in General Discussion

Why all these spam posts about movies?

ScottyP — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 10:54:03 GMT

What is with all the SPAM postings about movies? They appear overnight every morning. Obviously I don't open them. do we know if they are viruses, or pfishing traps or are they just spam ads?

Their titles always start with "Watch". Could the mods filter out all posts that start with "watch"? I don't open them up but it is still pretty annoying when in the morning 1/2 the new posts are one of these scams.

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

cicopo — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 12:43:18 GMT

I have to say this is the ONLY site I frequent with this kind of problem & Canon needs to deal with it. I'd bet that following the links will lead to problems later . They're either after your personal info or a back door into your computer.

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

Stephen — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 17:47:34 GMT

ScottyP and cicopo, thank you for posting your concerns. We're working on combatting these irksome spammers and have plans to implement more methods to stop them.

Thank you for your contributions and we appreciate your patience while we work to make the forum a better place for us all!

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

ScottyP — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 18:41:20 GMT

Glad you guys are on it. Weird that they seem to think camera and printer people might be lured in by pirate dvd's or pay per view boxing.

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

cicopo — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 20:15:58 GMT

What always gets me thinking when they post here is 'They expect me to give them my credit card info to buy something that can be considered an illegal activity, pirated property, or fake ID etc" and I'm supposed to think they have my interests in mind & are doing me a favor. "I'm dishonest but you can trust me with your credit card info". WELL I DON'T THINK SO!

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

ScottyP — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 10:40:12 GMT

It is getting so bad you can't use the site. I check in the early morning to see if there are new posts to read, but all the New Posts except 1 were those spam things. I really don't want to have to open every section on the website (EOS, EOS REBEL, Lenses, General Discussion, etc., etc.,) one at a time to see if there are any new posts, but those spammers make you do that. I have less time to visit the site than I used to and this just makes it that much harder.

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

TCampbell — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 21:21:06 GMT

On the lower-left corner of each post there's a link to "Report Inappropriate Content".

I can tell you that having been a moderator elsewhere that we always appreciated it when users did that. Basically the moderators will stumble onto these things as they go through post-by-post reviewing things. -OR- if you do the "report" feature, they get a special notice that someone has tagged a message and it takes them right to it... hence much faster removal of that content.

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

cicopo — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 00:11:27 GMT

Trust me when I say I've reported so many using the link I wouldn't be able to even guess how many, plus I've let them know they had to clean up other sections besides the one I'm reporting.

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

ScottyP — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:54:34 GMT

They use different emails every time so blocking them would be hard without some kind of content filter. I think OSS jeks are actually reading the site because hey are starting to vary the titles. Last one was "hurry I'm going to watch he hobbit...".

Again this morning ALL the new posts were that spammer. I may quit coming to this site in the mornings.

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

ClayStevens — Wed, 25 Dec 2013 03:20:01 GMT

It is not a hard job to deal with this condition, but it is obvious that canon take very few focus on this forum.

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

cicopo — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 14:14:01 GMT

Once again this site is SPAM central. Is this site listed on others as the best place to SPAM the planet?

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

ScottyP — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 14:22:14 GMT

The spam is all coming from new accounts. The spammers create a new account every time they post a new spam so they cant simply be blocked.

All this site needs to do is what a lot of other sites do; do not let anyone's very first post go straight to the board. Instead, every new contributor's very first post goes to the moderator's mailbox or a non-visible limbo place somewhere. The mods must read the post and then either reject the post (and the post-er), or else deem it legit and free that poster's account to post directly to the boards from then on.

Deleting them before they hit the board Seems no harder than the current system, which appears to be deleting them after they hit the board. Maybe those spamming doorknobs might even quit trying to post.

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

TCampbell — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 16:18:05 GMT

On the sites that I've moderated in the past, when we "block" someone it not only blocks their account (with option to auto-remove messages posted by that account) it also blocks their IP address.

But as this is Canon USA for North America customers, there's really no reason why Canon shouldn't just block the entire subnet.

When I was a moderator elsewhere, literally every one of these types of spam messages came from somewhere in Asia. It might take some work, but they could probably develop a filter to allow 1st time posts to go through if from North America, but require moderator approval for messages originating from outside North America.

Re: Why all these spam posts about movies?

ScottyP — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 15:17:57 GMT

Latest: today a new member called HCT8X created an account and posted 4 posts. He did one in each of the Camera topics. That titles were all 5-6 word sentence fragments. Together, from top to bottom, they all formed a little message so everyone sees the message whether you open them or not.

Now they are just playing with this site.