phone number list spam

oldfan

Looks like the meta-spammers (spammers spamming to sell spammers address lists) have found this forum a couple of days ago. :-(

Update: actually, all I've looked at closer point to www.lastdatabase.com, so maybe blocking posts containing a link to that and "phone number list" could be automated by @helen

(vaguely related: In my personal @work e-mail box, I got a few personal offers for all the personal details of the participants of one conference (per offer). I heared from an Austrian CERT employee that that sort of stuff is also very en mode in the recent weeks. May or may not be a criminal offense depending on the fineprint the conference participants signed.)

helen

I'm looking into a solution that will prevent (some of?) the spam, but it's not easy. The latest attempt can't be supported on my current host, so I'm trying to find a way that I can run on a different host. Bear with me a while...

Unfortunately, the interface for removing these accounts is very cumbersome and resets after deleting each one. Since there are hundreds of these fake accounts I just can't keep up with them.

helen

Well, we'll see what happens. I've had to move the forum host elsewhere. If I can persuade my host to update one service I could possibly move it back again. Where it is now it won't have 100% connectivity but it should be good 99% of the time.

The spam fighting options even of this new system aren't great, and I still have dozens of fake users who could become active and start spewing spam at any moment, but that's a problem for another day.