Spammers - A new generation..?

[Wayne]

Hmm, couple of new spammers made it onto the site last night. One sure seemed to be AI based, but did not post any links. Just stupid and inaccurate info. Odd. The other may have been a human, again with any links. Not sure what they are going after.. Maybe just posting for a while to look reputable before blasting us with junk?

 

[thenated0g]

Is your site easier to make accounts for than other forums? The only other forum i frequent is rcgroups.com so not sure how common this is. Im going to have to try and get chatgpt to answer some questions in here next time lol

 

[Wayne]

We had some users complaining about the human checks, so we have them turned off now. Typically a spammer pops up and tries to post links right away. The system flags these from be viewed by the public automatically. This usually catches most of the spammers. The smart ones lay low and post a few times first. Guessing that is what these bots are doing.

 

[Konrad]

Maybe it’s time to add back the human checks? Aren’t humans a bit more chatty than this on their first post?

katesmith1304

forum.alofthobbies.com

 

[Wayne]

Wow we have been getting a ton of SPAM this week. Luckily our system catches about 99% of it so you all don't need to see it, but they occasionally get one through. Seems to be more spam bots than actual human visits these days, but I guess that is normal for the internet these days.

 

[thenated0g]

we have been getting a bunch of legit looking UPS text spam

 

[Red]

we have been getting a bunch of legit looking UPS text spam

Me too, and I currently have a lost UPS package so I was thinking lol

 

[Wayne]

Yeah, we have been getting the UPS scammer emails too.

We have another one that seems to pray on small businesses. They email us seeking some rather large number of a random item or two from our website asking for a quote with shipping. At first you get excited about the possible big order, but then reality kicks in and your inner voice says; this order makes no sense at all. I assume their goal is to get banking information. I still have to test them out to see if they are real or not. We do get the occasional order from aerospace firms and schools from time to time, and that is exactly how these emails appear, like a corporate purchasing department.

An example order was a shit ton of contest grade balsa, but only in one size. They wanted so much it would probably have taken 2 full barges of balsa trunks just to source enough contest grade to fill the order.

 

[thenated0g]

I was trying to help her to think logically about it, the text message. It said they didnt have her physical address. How would they have your phone number but not your physical address. How would they have your info at all, your not the customer, amazon is the customer. I go thru this type of conversation all the time at work (IT). Did you actually use your work email address to make an account with amazon and order something? Than how did they get your work email address to send you this message ??

 

[Wayne]

Yep - I have the same conversations from time to time with my wife. A few months ago they were pretending to be the USPS, and I said when was the last time the USPS contacted you via a text message? How would they even have your phone number?

 

[Wayne]

Spammers and bots have been very busy. I have just made some changes to the sites security and spam settings. They should not impact our existing users, and hopefully be a bit easier for new users.

Please let me know if you run into any issues.

 

[Wayne]

So the new captcha has been up for one day. Already been served 1800 times. Wow!

 

[Hawaii Sloper]

So the new captcha has been up for one day. Already been served 1800 times. Wow!

I just saw an interesting YouTube short on how captcha works. It tracks your mouse movement and also looks at your browser history and apparently some other magic stuff so it knows your a person.