My First Spammer?

[Luke B]

Hello All,

Yesterday a new member signed up on SLRuser and quickly got to posting on existing threads and asking me questions on my profile. At first he seemed very enthusiastic about learning photography but then asked me about posting none related photography things. Then in the Chit Chat section he posted this.

Am I jumping to conclusions or is something fishy? I've never had a spammer before.

 

[Paul B]

Spammer.

 

[Ingenious]

If you cut and paste the first paragraph into Google, the exact same post comes up on many other sites. It's a cut and paste job, so something funny going on. I note from the profile he is from Lagos, Nigeria. Might be worth running with it though, to see how/where/when he spams so you'll know more about this for next time.

 

[Kevin]

If you cut and paste the first paragraph into Google, the exact same post comes up on many other sites. It's a cut and paste job, so something funny going on. I note from the profile he is from Lagos, Nigeria. Might be worth running with it though, to see how/where/when he spams so you'll know more about this for next time.

.... or tell him that you need to transfer a large amount of money to a bank in Nigeria but need his assistance, and in exchange he will get a percentage of the money when the transaction is done.

 

[Luke B]

Thanks guys. Bummer he's a spammer but I guess that comes with the gig.
Would you delete him permanently right away or like Ingenious said, see what he does next?

 

[jadmperry]

I delete spammers as soon as they show up and I know about them. I get so many (variable, but between 10-30 per week), that I figure any extra time spent on them and pretty soon my entire day would be spent with spam management.

 

[Luke B]

I delete spammers as soon as they show up and I know about them. I get so many (variable, but between 10-30 per week), that I figure any extra time spent on them and pretty soon my entire day would be spent with spam management.

That's a lot of spammers :/
I hope they don't get too out of hand on my site.

 

[Dean]

Would you delete him permanently right away or like Ingenious said, see what he does next?

Depends on my mood. Sometimes 'discourage' them, sometimes ban, but I never have their permissions set so their new content is un-moderated.

 

[jonsidneyb]

I delete spammers as soon as they show up and I know about them. I get so many (variable, but between 10-30 per week), that I figure any extra time spent on them and pretty soon my entire day would be spent with spam management.

I am catching about 5 each day at the gate.

 

[iTuN3r]

Here's my first spammer lol and the person is actually from South asia .

 

[zappaDPJ]

I'm seeing a lot of new registrations and posts from what are clearly human (as opposed to bot) spammers across all my forums recently. They often post in such away that suggests they might be genuine but if you search their posts, profiles and signatures there's usually something there to indicate otherwise.

I find it somewhat annoying because it does take time to weed these out, I wouldn't want to ban a genuine new member. In general I do ban them though (rather than delete) and move their posts to a dump box. I like to leave some form of audit trail to spot trends or in case of an error on my part.