A forum update regarding recent forum spam attacks

Dear Forum Users,

Below is an update to you regarding recent forum spam attacks:

What has been occurring:
In the last 30 days, we've seen a rash of Spammers register as forum users. I've caught 80% of them and Banned them before they've been able to make their first post. That other 20% has been a bit embarrassing as they've made their first (and only) spam post before I noticed. And for that friends, I apologize. Especially today, as we had an especially graphic post with embedded pornographic images.

Porn, Drug and other advertising spam posts occur on all online forums and it's becoming even more rampant. As with any online community, there is no fool-proof way to vet 100% of new registrants.

Changes we’ve recently implemented:
In the last 7 days, I have taken several steps to combat forum spam as follows:

• Domain Filtering - I have found some commonality in the registrations of spammers and have begun the wholesale banning of new registrations by users of specific email providers (mostly Eastern European). These domain filters should take a large bite out of this problem for us.
  
• Added rigor to registration process - To date, most of my spammers have not been too conversant in English. As such, I have added another required field for all new registrants – a requirement to type a short sentence of their interest in the forum. How they respond could be a clue to their true intentions.
  
• New Forum Moderator - The most significant of the recent changes made is the addition of a forum Moderator. John Morgan, aka jpmorgan37 has accepted the role and has received initial training as our first Moderator.
  
  As Moderator, John will receive email notification of all new registrants. Through his initial training and time on the job, John will learn to recognize common registration patterns of spammers in order to help me Ban suspect new users before they even complete their registration confirmation. Should they make it past the rigor of the new registration requirements, past the ‘new user’ review process and actually make an offensive/spam post, John has the capability to Delete those posts.
  
  Additionally, John will have the capability to help me with general forum house keeping – such as moving and merging threads and posts as needed.

Future Plans
As the forum continues to grow, administration of the forum must grow with it. Here are a few things on the horizon:

• More Moderators – More moderators will be added as warranted
  
• Forum Upgrade – An upgrade to the current forum revision is planned for February 2007
  
• Tougher CAPTCHA – We plan to implement a tougher CAPTCHA used in the registration process to further guard against registrations by bots (automated computer registrations – no human involved). A CAPTCHA is those silly, yet effective graphic images of letters and numbers that the user must interpret and enter in order to complete the registration process.
  
• Moderate First Posts – And finally, the best of them all, we are researching a forum modification that will allow us to have the first post of all new users to go into the Moderation queue for review by one of our Moderators before that first post appears in the forum.

That concludes my update. Thank you for your patronage of this forum and I offer you my apologies for the aspects of this forum that have not gone perfectly since our launch in October of 2004. Like life, it’s a learning process and we’re getting better all the time. A big thank you to all of you who regularly contribute to this forum. Your constructive posts are why people visit here. Thanks for making the Heartland Owners Forum “the place” on the Internet for the scoop on Heartland products.


Jim Beletti
Owner/Admin

Thanks Jim for your interest and investment in this forum. It is great to have a place where the owners can discuss problems and remedies.

If I can be of service to or for the forum, I would be happy to help out.

Keep up the good work.

Jim

Thanks for your tireless efforts to keep the board safe. Now if only I could figure out how to keep spam out of my email.

Thanks Jim for watching over the site and to John for being willing to help.I think it is very important to keep this a site that we will all be proud of.

Thanks Jim and keep up the good work. I am sure the forum will benefit from the help john can give to assist you. I have found this to be a great forum and am sure it will remain that way with your attention and the help of a good staff.
Don

I will add my Kudos also to Jim and now JP Morgan. Keep up the great site and work

Great work Jim.
You could not have picked a better person.
Congratulations John.
Thank you both.

Jim,
You have nothing to apologize for. You are doing a great job so stop beating yourself up.

Thank you Jim and thanks to our new moderator John Morgan for their desire to keep this Site running as smoothly as it does. Great Job guys... Thank You both !!

Marv