When I came in here tonight, down near the bottom of the page was a note that “unsecuredloans” was our newest member. I thought “Hmmm. There’s one that’s not going to last.”
Sure enough - they went from joining at 10:59 to banning at or before 11:29. Is that a typical lifespan for a spammer?
Usually it’s shorter than that. Our fearless spam hunters must have been on coffee break.
Some spammers and trolls have been banned within minutes of registering. It’s not typical, but it’s ideal. They can’t make trouble if they don’t even get to post.
90 seconds is a record I’ve seen. Spam post, snarky reply by me, report post, and the whole thing is gone by the time I finished reporting it. Marley was really on the ball that day.
What about the shortest non-spammer? Or would that be kosher to talk about?
There have been socks and trolls who lasted only a couple of minutes or less. There’s no way to tell exactly how long any of them lasted because the system doesn’t log the time at which a user was banned. We can see when they registered, but we keep track of the bans ourselves and don’t always log them right away.
I’ve banned a returning sock within a minute of their activating their registration. I’m sure Marley’s done it to more than one.
Just curious, how would you know they were a spammer if they didn’t post? I mean, there might really be a legitimate user with the name “Buy Viagra Here” right?
We check their IP addresses and email addresses as well as their usernames. Internet databases like Stop Forum Spam are very useful, and if we see that someone has registered at dozens or hundreds of message boards in one day, we can be pretty sure that’s a spambot. A non-spammer could use Viagra or Forex in a username, but in real life, that’s never happened. And we’ve blocked those words from usernames anyway, which means nobody else can use them.
It took less than 5 minutes for these two to be banned and me suspended when I made this stupid joke… I expected to get spanked. I was shocked at the speed the spanking was delivered.
They send enforcers out to spank miscreants?! Kinky! Some people (not me) might get off on that. 
Yeah, they spank hard, and they spank fast. I strongly reccommend against the type of things they spank. Your mileage may vary… But have fun if you choose otherwise…
Next time, pick an easier to remember “safe” word and things will go a lot smoother.
Just sayin’.
Oh, the chances are pretty slim of that happening, and we WILL unban if someone writes and asks.
Some spammers follow a particular pattern, though, and we’ve learned how to recognize some patterns, as well as use various tools to spot spammers. We’ve also got a dandy little program which recognizes some spam posts, and hides the posts until a moderator can look at them. This program lets some posts slip through, but I’ve never seen it flag a post as spam and be wrong.
PansyAss might work. Note, that particular strip is more or less safe for work, but the strips following it depict an adult situation. Nothing really explicit, but it might be awkward explaining it to your boss, or your 8 year old (your 13 year old has probably seen worse).
Back in my day, about half the sock accounts on the board were all the same person. Once, it registered 26 different usernames, one right after the other (so quickly that it got 26 consecutive user ID numbers), one starting with each letter of the alphabet. I think it got a chance to actually post under about three of those, before they were all banned.
We’ve been using this system for about 18 months and I’d say I’ve seen it flag maybe five legit posts as spam. It’s an excellent tool for catching spam.
Now that is impressively fast typing!
OK, I’ll take your word for it, you stay on top of this stuff more than I do.
