We have been hit with hundreds of thousands of spam messages over the years, and many of the spammers use clever tactics to circumvent the measures we increasingly put in place (IP checks, blocked throwaway email addresses etc..).
This not only takes up a lot of our site resources and contributes to downtime, but also requires someone to spend hours and hours on a daily basis going through deleting all the accounts when this can't be done automatically.
So we've decided enough is enough.
It's getting worse and worse, costly, and ruining the quality of our service for everyone.
In the coming weeks, restrictions will be put on messaging, across the board.
Members must be upgraded to at least a Bronze in order to use the messaging services.
This will stop the site spam in its tracks.
Reviews are being made of the chat rooms, forums, and other site features which spammers attack, to restrict access.
The primary reason the site exists is for people to enjoy reading and writing stories. That will not change.
Everything else we offer free, which let's be honest, equates to the features many major dating sites (who charge $10+ per month) would be proud to have, are under review.
I will post separately once we've decided which measures we'll be putting into place.
It's probably time for the Bronze membership itself to be shelved too, but that's a post for another day.
That will stop the PM spam, and the limitations on posting URLs in the forum stymies them there, but I suspect they'll immediately pivot to story comment spam, which many are already doing.
That's a bit of a stickier situation. Blocking all comments containing URL strings ( not forgetting things like Bitly ) with a filter would impede them, and make most of their spamming attempts there pointless, at least. Give at least some of the mods the ability to add to the filter list via a secure control panel, so you and Gav don't have to be the only ones maintaining that filter. Mods in different time zones from you would be optimal, since that will make it more likely someone with the ability to add new URL shortening link strings to the filter will be able to act soon after one shows up.
Limitations on adding a website/twitter/facebook to your profile would also be a good idea. Maybe require a certain number of forum posts or a published story/poem before you can add any of those links to your profile. Anyone who publishes probably isn't a spammer, and anyone who isn't going to publish will have to interact for a while before they can add it. ( If this isn't already in place. It's been so long that I don't remember LOL ) Also block URL strings with the filter in the other profile fields. That will help prevent sleeper accounts that seem innocuous until a couple of weeks later when they fill their profile with spam links. ( Again, if not already in place )
You might even consider filtering strings such as onlyfans and manyvids, but odds are that letter replacement tricks will make that such a game of whack-a-mole that it wouldn't be worth the effort.
Just what popped in my head as I was reading the post.
The system to stop spammers in the forum doesn't seem to be working.
Jbooa4747 seems to have managed to post a spam link even though he only has one forum post.
