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Topic: Spam emails from nbn

I keep getting emails purporting to be from nbn but they are advertising some unconnected product - for example:-

""johnsonjennifer699 has created new topic 'Where Wrinkles Cream available' in forum to which you are subscribed.

The new topic is located at http://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?id=5416

You can unsubscribe by going to http://forums.nbn.org.uk/misc.php?forum … ced97d6576
--
Forum Mailer
(Do not reply to this message)""

These are supposed to come from <Forum Mailer <mike@lfield.co.uk>

I have copied some of these messages with a complaint to <support@nbn.org.uk> but so far nobody has bothered to reply. 'Obviously' some person is hacking into the nbn database.

I think you should do some thing about this, don't you?

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Re: Spam emails from nbn

I also get these spurious items supposedly from NBN  - these come from <Forum Mailer <mike@lfield.co.uk> - I receive them at my work address not on my home computer. don't know why. I've complained to NBN about this before to no avail. I don't want to unsubscribe in case I miss something of importance.

Bob Marsh
Doncaster LRC
Coleoptera recorder for YNU

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Re: Spam emails from nbn

Hi both,

Apologies for the lack of response on this. 

We had a spate of bogus Forum posts a few years ago and the system was updated to the latest version of punBB software, with the kind help of Charles Roper and Mike Weideli.  This seemed to stop SPAM for a good while, but it now seems to be increasing, to what I totally agree is an annoying level once again. 
Please bear with us while we look for an alternative solution.  I can't promise this will be a quick process, but we will keep on top of the bogus posts and delete the unwanted messages and ban the users as best we can.

If anyone has any experience with other forums and the software they use, please do post any information which may be of use to us on here.

Many thanks and thank you for your patience.

Kind regards,
Mandy

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Re: Spam emails from nbn

Yes. I feel the same as Atheta01 - I don't want to unsubscribe in case I miss something useful. Please stick with it!
Cheers. Alan

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Re: Spam emails from nbn

The mesages are coming from the forum mailer, because there is a new topic on the  forum. Very often these are identified has spam by a moderator and deleted so the message has gone, but too late to stop the email. Any returns from thes email end up with me and typically this can be 100 or so emails, so it is very much something I want to resolve.

As its stands anyone can register on the forum and post a message. There checks in place require them to receive and respond to an email and there are various restrictions which will prevent automated systems, from registering and posting, but if we continue to allow automatic registration there isn't much that can be done about someone  who goes through the registration process and then  submits spam as their first post. Once we know someone is not genuine then further post can be prevented.  I did some research on this a while back and understand that students  are being paid to find sites like ours and register and post advertising spam, which may explain why there is a concentration of spam at weekends.   

I have made a minor change to the forum configuration which will stop the first post of any new user from containing a link to another site. This may discourage advertising spam, but not the person just out to be disruptive.  Also I have implemented an anti spam feature designed to stop identical posts. Not sure if this will help much, but it will not do any harm.

One option is to prevent automatic registration. This would still allow the forum to be accessed by anyone as a guest, but they would, but in order to post they would need to apply to be set up as a user . Downside is that this puts an obstacle in the way of genuine posts.

Mike Weideli

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Re: Spam emails from nbn

Thanks to Mike's help with this, we have a solution which seems to have dramatically reduced the amount of SPAM coming through the Forum.  We have implemented the option which means that registration is no longer automatic, which allows the administrators to decline registrations if they appear to be non-genuine users.  Hopefully this won't be too much of an inconvenience for genuine users who are not able to post straightaway, but it should be no more than 24 hours until their registration has been reviewed and approved.  So, let's see how we get on and review things as needed.

Many thanks for your patience as users and many thanks to Mike for coming up with a solution so quickly.

Mandy