Spammers Via Social Media

Hello

This is for information for all Forumotion Admin who advertise their websites via social media.
Even though Forumotion has an Anti Spam mode on all their sites some spammers do come through the net.
Today I banned a member who joined in April 2015, this member never logged onto my site until yesterday, started posting TV related comments in threads that had no TV related topics. The comments were exactly the same and made no sense at all.

I am sure that this member came via Twitter as I have had my board nearly five years and have never had a Spammer on my site. I would like to advise that I was lucky to have seen this spammer who was using the same  IP address over the past two days. However the unusual thing the IP address was located in Indonesia yesterday but today it was located in Venezuela.
This IP address was   190.74.70.112 and the user name Tamdevli the name is not listed with the Spammer IP lists that I looked up.

Social media is a great source to advertise your websites but there are a few undesirables that like to spoil things for others.

If this message is in the wrong place I apologise but it is valid information for all forumotion users.

Regards

Cassini

Are you asking a question?  I have had these types of spambots before I used social media.

Hello SLGray

I am not asking a question, I am passing on some information for other Forumotion users.
If its in the wrong place please move to the correct place as I was not sure where to post it.

Regards
Cassini

Generally speaking spambots will find every forum at some point, even forums with low or high activity, regardless if the forums uses social media or any outside advertisements. Forumotion does take steps to prevent spambots and spammers but generally some do slip through the net. Banning them is a good step but also if you find you get multiple spambots via the same IP then you might want to consider banning the IP address. However try not to ban many IPs because it can have a negative effect when you ban a lot of IP addresses.

Hello Derri

I agree, I have over 30 pages of banned IPs on my other Forumotion site, most are IPs with links to Spammers. I have always checked IPs on guests before they join and ban them, when I have done my IP checks. Unfortunately this one slipped through until I was online yesterday at the same time. Both my forumotion sites I have links on Twitter and other UK and USA forum sites.  
Thanks for your information I am aware there are good bots but there are many bad ones.

Regards
Cassini

I have noticed that most spammers/spambots will created an account, but wait a couple days before posting.

I had spam bot that registered 3 months ago but didn't appear until recently, it only did 2 posts and was dealt with and banned. I have no banned ips or email addresses and only 4 banned accounts, all of which were spambots. Generally I don't go by ips when i keep an eye on an account for possibly being a spambot, I usually look at the registation email address, as spambots usually register with certain email addresses. Spambots commonly have unusualy long email addresses with tons of '.' in them, no human would want such email address. When I see one of these I usually 'flag' the account, which generally consists with advising the staff of it, monitior the accounts behavior, posts etc. Spambots are usually spotted within a single post. Other then that, I dont worry about accounts, dont ban ips, its pointless anyway, also I think trying to determine if an account is a spambot using the ip, is a very unreliable means of doing so.

Also when you share on Twitter and Google, Yahoo and Google bots visit your forum, so sharing is important for indexing your forum.

Hello

First of all I would like to remind that Forumotion has a powerful anti-spam tool that blocks thousands and thousands of spammers every minutes. Whatever you do on the net (sharing content on social media, promoting your website on blog,...) there is a risk of getting spammers. The only way not to have any spammer is to not create any website...
That is the reality of the net...
We are thankful for your warning message, but this kind of message is not useful on a support forum.

Anyway thanks for your help.

Best regards
Buttercup