PowerSwitch

...this forums being invaded by prixx? By prixx I mean advertising posts! Is there some sort of conspiracy, what with the site being hacked. Or has it always happend?

It's not just me going mad then and seeing numerous pointless, non-po posts.

wayne72 wrote:...this forums being invaded by prixx? By prixx I mean advertising posts! Is there some sort of conspiracy, what with the site being hacked. Or has it always happend?

There are paid for forum spamming services. I've seen one that boasted of its ability to mix its spam with properly researched/on-topic forum posts. I suspect Powerswitch is the target of one or more of these.

bigtoe wrote:

wayne72 wrote:...this forums being invaded by prixx? By prixx I mean advertising posts! Is there some sort of conspiracy, what with the site being hacked. Or has it always happend?

There are paid for forum spamming services. I've seen one that boasted of its ability to mix its spam with properly researched/on-topic forum posts. I suspect Powerswitch is the target of one or more of these.

William Gibson's latest -Pattern Recognition- contains elements of these tricks. But it's much better done in the book! Gibson was the guy who coined the word "cyberspace" some twenty years ago in the novel "Neuromancer". According to rumor, he write on a classic typewriter...

I've been going through deleting the off-topic adverts, as has Damian. I've also been deleting the usernames and blocking re-registering using wildcards, e.g. "DodgyUser*" as some of them just add a random number after their name.

Obviously it's harder if they try and make an intelligent post, and it's done by real people not an automated system, but they're generally easy to spot in the memberlist as they have a website link listed and have registered in the last day or two. Obviously some legitimate users also have a website registered so I've been treading carefully and checking them out fully before getting rid of them. If I've done anyone by mistake please give me a shout.

At the end of the day we can never stop this entirely, but we can make it difficult and also pointless for them by deleting stuff quickly.