Please flag the spam !

cmriverside · September 27

Well

The first 14 pages of my "Followed Recent Posts" are all spam. Either it's being done automatically or there are some bored people out there.

Regardless, the worst part is it's 4 AM on Saturday here in the western U.S. so there's no staff to zap it.

Can we get some user-moderators on different schedules that have zapping power? The over-night thing is a pretty big problem.

yakkystuff · September 27

It's deep - 21 pages now

cmriverside · September 27

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48778427#Comment_48778427

Still only 14 for me…but I have many Community Categories "unfollowed."

@yakkystuff I guess it would be smart to go to posting mostly in Groups. A Private Group would be even better!

You and I could chat here! I have nothing to chat about though!

nossmf · September 27

Came here to start posting the usernames throwing out the spam, was up to 15 different names by the time I found this thread on page 7, guess no real point in posting them as it sounds like it'll be pretty obvious for whomever with power gets around to doing something.

nossmf · September 27

(Bookmarked this thread for easier finding in the future…)

DiscusTank5 · September 27

This morning there are spam posts under every thread: I flagged the first one I saw, checked another -- by someone who created an account within the past hour and posted 30+ ads in that time. It would take all day to flag each of these.

MFP needs better protection overall because this type of behavior makes the forums hard to use.

DiscusTank5 · September 27

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48778634#Comment_48778634

There are now more than 10,000 pages of threads under Fitness and Exercise. :(

yakkystuff · September 27

Last night, I bookmarked, the first 2 discussion posts I had in the "recent discussions list." They are still on my 'bookmarked list' this morning.

There were so many, I did not bother to flag/report.

Kind of surprised it is still this way at 9:25 am Western PDT/PST US time - Sat morning.

Fwiw, have not seen anything added as a comment on any of my usual bookmarked discussions.

yakkystuff · September 27

Starts page 27 of 334 in my "recent discussions list"

Android phone, web version. Fwiw. And growing.

cmriverside · September 27

Well and part of the problem is that it's Saturday and apparently no staff logs in to the Community on the weekends.

I haven't seen any additional pages added since about six hours ago. Yeah, it makes the Community impossible to read.

I'm thinking of starting a new Private Group.

claireychn074 · September 27

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48778723#Comment_48778723

Good grief this is irritating. Come on MFP peeps!

sugaraddict4321 · September 27

@cmriverside are you still seeing posts? I've been clearing them for a few hours and don't see any more.

robertw486 · September 27

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48778805#Comment_48778805

I knew someone else was abusing their mouse buttons killing this stuff!

For all….. PLEASE if you have already clicked the spam link flag it! Though most people do this on a regular basis I'm seeing posts with 15-17 views and not a single spam flag.

And keep in mind we have no idea who on MFP staff is dealing with it "behind the scenes" and what they are dealing with. For all we know there could be staff members with their hands full just trying to stop the new stuff from hitting the forums.

AnnPT77 · September 27

There was at least one spam moderator online for at least part of the storm. Maybe more than one, I don't know. There was no keeping up with the inflow, just not possible.

I think these were designed in a way to defeat some common forms of automated spam detection. (I could be more specific, but I don't see the point of typing it out.)

I don't know what automated spam detection methods MFP uses, but I'm loosely familiar with some of the automated methods generally common in the industry to automate spam identification. These particular spams absolutely did use tactics to elude some of those common automated rules.

I've worked in a small way in computer security during my career. I think people not in IT - even some in different branches of IT - don't correctly understand that spam and other black hat hacking are basically an arms race between the perpetrators and computer security people. Security staff put up the technology equivalent of moats, walls, narrow tunnels that supposedly only good guys can get through, locked doors with difficult keys, etc. Those barriers these days are EXTENSIVE.

Bad guys figure out wily ways around those barriers. The security people put up defenses against those ways around. It just keeps going like that.

The public sees the attacks that succeed. That's a small fraction. The public don't see the ones that don't make it through the safeguards, nor do they see attempts that simply didn't work because of some minor ineptitude by the bad guys. (A high fraction of the bad guys are evil but not very competent. Too many ARE competent, though. It doesn't take many clever ones to create BIG problems.)

At my former employer, much earlier in the development of internet security - less numerous/skilled bad guys and good guys both - we put up some robust and expensive perimeter security for the networks. Non-IT people thought it was a big price to pay for stopping a few nefarious teenagers poking at our computers from their mom's basements. That wasn't the scenario. The first day, the perimeter security improvement stopped over half a million attack attempts. The bad stuff has gotten much, much more voluminous since then.

yakkystuff · September 27

Ty Ann

It was wild, think that was the largest volume I've observed, anywheres.

yakkystuff · September 27

@cmriverside I'm thinking of starting a new Private Group.

Perhaps a place to talk concerns… and soundboard?

Have been inspired this year by likes of @nossmf who meets & greets, by @springlering62 who shares encourgement and a sense of can do, and so many others… could be a good thing.

cmriverside · September 27

OH, I know it's not easy. And with AI I'm sure once someone finds a chink in the armor they just clone that and set the bots on it.

I'm on some other forums and they occasionally have a few (like four or five) spam posts in a day, but nothing like what happens here on the regular. I've never liked Vanilla forums, they are so user un-friendly in so many ways.

One of the other forums I'm on is all volunteer and only a handful of staff. They almost never get spam, and it's every bit as active in general as this forum. It's a standard vBulletin format and so much easier. The other day there were 80 members online and 19 thousand lurkers/non-logged viewers. I'm told it's bots mining information - which I have no reason to disbelieve…but vBulletin forums just don't get blanket spammed in anywhere near the volume as this site.

@yakkystuff yeah, I've been in private groups before with member vetting/invitation only, not sure I want to do it yet, it's a headache too. 😐️ It would be a place to check in with no chance of spamming though.

cmriverside · September 27

Thanks SugarAddict, Ann and robertw. Looks clear now. It's just because it's a Saturday and middle of the night on the Left Coast. Ya'll are allowed to not be online 24/7. 😁

@robertw486 - I didn't open any of them. No point, really. Thanks for killin' 'em.