Spammers Suck

Comment

Comment by Daniel Leuck on May 17, 2010 at 3:33pm

Member Lilian Ross (http://www.hikersjournal.org/profile/LilianRoss?xg_source=profiles_memberList) is a spammer and should be banned. She just sent the following message, "I received a free social media analysis for my business from this company last week, and I was impressed by what I learned. I wanted to pass this on and recommend them. Here's the location where you request the free analysis from: ..."

Comment by Rory Partalis on May 10, 2010 at 10:27am

I may have already pulled down blog moderation (if not, it will), but that was where most of the spam was coming through until I banned all the members spamming the blogs. Hopefully the spam will slow if and when I transition this network over to a new platform.

Comment by Daniel Leuck on May 9, 2010 at 12:06am

Rory Partalis: Unfortunately I've had to moderate all new members and all new blog posts to resolve this issue.

Unfortunately moderating membership on Ning has become a requirement, there are just too many spammers, but you may want to reconsider moderating blog posts and just have a one-strike-you-are-out policy for removing members. When we moderated blog posts on other networks (we run about a dozen on Ning and other platforms), participation dropped precipitously. When people slave away on a good blog post, they want to see it shown immediately. If they don't get that satisfaction, many will choose to blog elsewhere.

Comment by Rory Partalis on May 7, 2010 at 12:38pm

Unfortunately I've had to moderate all new members and all new blog posts to resolve this issue, but it appears to be working. If anything slips through my system, feel free to let me know and I'll put an ax to their profile in no time.

Comment by Daniel Leuck on May 5, 2010 at 4:19pm

Hi John. We deal with the same challenges on TechHui. We solved the problem by turning on moderated membership and only approving new members that give decent answers to the profile questions. The spammers usually put crap like "tell you later" for the required questions. If, for example, a person can't easily answer your profile question "Where is the coolest place you have ever hiked?" then they probably aren't a hiker. :-)

Comment by Rory Partalis on December 10, 2009 at 7:21pm

Thank you all for hanging in there and sorry I haven't been able to resolve this sooner. At first I was hoping it was an isolated couple of people spamming the site, but they just kept coming. Then I realized it was a internet bot targeting a lot of Ning social networks. Ning is aware of the problem and is working on a solution, but in the mean time, I've suspended all spamming accounts and made it so I have to approve all blog posts and new members.

Comment by Ata on December 9, 2009 at 11:28am

thank you for taking the time to tell us this my friend

Comment by James S on December 9, 2009 at 12:52am

i agree