What do you feel like saying, right now?

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by John

The amount of spam sure was overwhelming to say the least. GC was under attack by an army of spammers. Both bots & people (via spam operations in very low wage countries).

Some spam operations even have people assist the bots directly in getting past anti-spam setups (there was an article in Wired magazine about that years ago).

What you saw was probably only a small fraction of the total spam that got through. GC's mods team was amazingly helpful & effective in fighting off the spam bots. It's really quite exhausting, though, especially when the spam is/was at its worst.

A rough estimate is that there were probably hundreds of thousands of spam messages.

And even that was only from a fraction of the spam bots that attempted to get on to GC. Last I checked it was getting close to 10 million entries in the section of the database for the automated anti-spam setup on GC.

Even with as much as is setup on GC to block spam bots it is still not enough at times. Recently it seems we've just been lucky to not be targeted as much. As things are, the flood of spam could return at any time.

The good news, though, is that after (or as part of) the upcoming forum software change ( http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...d.php?t=247673 ) I'll be working to implement a new anti-spam setup which should permanently solve the spam issue, if all things go right.

WOW!! I knew that there was a lot of spam, but hundreds of thousands? I think moe.ron and FSUZeta took care of many thousands of spam posts alone!

[aephi alum]

Originally Posted by Cheerio

Neighbors still have outdoor Xmas decorations up. Perhaps they're celebrating April Fools Day this Thursday?

My father referred to Christmas wreaths left up after Ash Wednesday as "Easter wreaths".

[John]

Originally Posted by honeychile

WOW!! I knew that there was a lot of spam, but hundreds of thousands? I think moe.ron and FSUZeta took care of many thousands of spam posts alone!

Very rough estimate. I'm thinking it was somewhere between 250-350k spam posts or so. Cumulative, not all at once or over a short period of time. But there were multiple periods of time where the spam was concentrated, which I'm sure we all remember how bad those times were.

[Psi U MC Vito]

Originally Posted by John

The amount of spam sure was overwhelming to say the least. GC was under attack by an army of spammers. Both bots & people (via spam operations in very low wage countries).

Some spam operations even have people assist the bots directly in getting past anti-spam setups (there was an article in Wired magazine about that years ago).

What you saw was probably only a small fraction of the total spam that got through. GC's mods team was amazingly helpful & effective in fighting off the spam bots. It's really quite exhausting, though, especially when the spam is/was at its worst.

A rough estimate is that there were probably hundreds of thousands of spam messages.

And even that was only from a fraction of the spam bots that attempted to get on to GC. Last I checked it was getting close to 10 million entries in the section of the database for the automated anti-spam setup on GC.

Even with as much as is setup on GC to block spam bots it is still not enough at times. Recently it seems we've just been lucky to not be targeted as much. As things are, the flood of spam could return at any time.

The good news, though, is that after (or as part of) the upcoming forum software change ( http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...d.php?t=247673 ) I'll be working to implement a new anti-spam setup which should permanently solve the spam issue, if all things go right.

Thank you for this information. I had no idea how bad things were behind the scenes, though I do appreciate the incredible amount of work that the moderating team puts in.

[cheerfulgreek]

Smh @ my home state. I’m glad I’m a vet and not a police officer.