"False Alarm" Topic Reply Notifications

HalfWavyHalfCurly

Lately I've been getting an increasing amount of false notifications for thread updates and I wonder if this is happening to everyone else. When I click on the given link I get a NC.com page with a "box" that says:

Information

The topic or post you requested does not exist.

Today I got 3 different ones for the thread "I Colored for the First Time this Weekend", one each for "Olive Oil Creme", "Dirt Cheap Leave-In", "Can you mix different shades/levels of temp. color?", and "ack polyquats!". And in the "White Rain" and "A sulfate in conditioner?" what I found was spam for a porn site link... :evil: Most of those threads are in the "Going Shampoo-less" forum, btw.

curlyjenn

Maybe SPAM replies that have been removed before you click on your notification to look at them?

HalfWavyHalfCurly

I'd thought of that but since I got others with the spam that clouded the thought, but I believe you're right. The spam is probably appearing so fast some may go unnoticed...

System

Yes, most likely it's spam that has already been removed. The spambots have been very active, durn them.

Gretchen

I met w/ a guy yesterday who hopeuflly will get started on fixing things next week.

HalfWavyHalfCurly

Suzen:

I don't think those are"spam bots". I asked my son (who's a Network Admin and is very savvy about anything computer related) if that was possible and he said "No", a "bot" could not fill in the info for membership nor pick a thread or create one and post, he said these are very likely people who are paid to "work at home" and get paid by how many entries they get, frankly, that really made sense to me, particularly because many times new posts have appeared right behind people who regularly report them (like me...), it seemed to me "someone" was trying to make it a "game" by trying to annoy us even more.

I hope the guy Gretchen is getting has the necessary expertise to trace and block the computers/servers from which the spam is coming from and also report them to the authorities, as this is totally illegal, so we can finally be rid of these pests.

System

Somehow the idea of a human being sending us all this filth really disturbs me.

The amount of spam seems greatly reduced today, I wonder if the anti-spam expert has been on the case.

HalfWavyHalfCurly

It may be disturbing but not surprising, there certainly is no limit to what some people will do for money. Spamming has been officially illegal for a good while but that doesn't stop the spammers, they simply get more "creative" in finding new ways to do it. My son was guessing that these may be some "scum-buckets" offering a "work at home" deal that pays according to the number of "hits", so those that accept the "job" couldn't care less if they're annoying others as long as they can get a wide enough audience.

Gretchen

Spam is down cuz I set the board registrations to where I have to approve them. I try to guess which are bots, and delete those before they even get a chance to post. It's a pain in the arse, but at least it keeps spam off the boards.

My smart guy has a good plan for some upgrades/modifications, and will get to work on it late this week, with luck.