High Spam rates On Elgg Community Site Since April 16, 2015

High Spam rate! (1180 spams from Korea) sent to my Personal email address through Elgg community since April 16, 2015 from Korean spammers.

Today while reading my personal email, I notice a lot  of Spam sent to my email through Elgg community discussion groups since April 16, 2015. I was able to delete 1180 spam emails. Deleting the spam emails from my personal email account took a long time! While deleting all the spam emails sent through Elgg community site, I realized that most of these spams where sent by using Korean Language and most of them had the same title even though the owners or users were different from time to time; which means that the spammers know that the elgg community site maintenance team always delete spams posted on "Elgg.org" site and and finally  shut down "ban" the senders in order  to prevent further unwanted spam contents from being sent or posted on the site. However, the spammers also know that their original contents deleted from the community site, normally ends up in the Elgg community group member's personal email addresses.

If this is true to most members here on Elgg Community site, as a member you might notice a couple of recent peaks of spam in your personal email address since the begging of April 16, 2015. That's spam from a single sender sending spam to a large group of Elgg members.

In order to continue to receive notifications from the Elgg site I could not Mark conversations sent through  no-reply@elgg.org as spam nor could I cancel  to receive notifications when actions are performed by me or other Elgg group user's content. As a result, I was left in the same situation I was before -- the spam might be flooding my personal email account in the near future.

I know there is nothing like spam proof site. However, How can the Elgg community members and Elgg Developers help to reduce the rate of spam on Elgg Community site?

 

 

 

  • We could prevent notifications from going out if the poster is "unverified." Would have to figure out a simple way to give them permission to trigger notifications. Maybe a verified person needs to respond/like their content first. Then the poster is upgraded to verified and the notification is sent retroactively.

    Could work?

    I definitely want new people to come here and be able to post and get help with as little overhead as possible, but yea the fact that notifications are sent to all subscribers without being able to validate trustworthiness of a poster... That seems bad.

  • A lot of spam on Elgg Community again.

    Maybe need to add any simple (at least) captcha in the registration form?

  • This Spam  thing is annoying!!!

  • How about a feature where you post something and then you gotta wait 30 seconds before posting another? It's like those forum scripts. Or add a captcha in the comment forms.

  • I am using Spam Throttle for this. I can limit the user post using this plugin.

  • The community is also using Spam throttle. This is why spammers create multiple account.

  • Also the registration form does have a captcha, but somehow the spammers keep getting through.

  • How about adding a new feature in spam throttle where admin can limit the post based on IPs.

    Even if the user is making multiple account the post is being done by same IP. We can limit the post using IP.

  • Everyone (who's logged in) can help fight against spam on the Community site. Every posting has a "Mark as spam" entry in the entity menu. If several members marked the same posting as spam it will get disabled / invisible. But it will only work if more than one member marks a posting (don't know the number set here on the community site). It might also work if different spam postings of the same account are marked by different members. The more people help to mark spam the faster it will become invisible (later deletion by admin still necessary). And if the spammers realizes that their postings are made invisible faster than they are able to gain any advantage from them they might (hopefully) give up posting any new spam.

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Feedback and Planning

Discussions about the past, present, and future of Elgg and this community site.