The owner of this site needs to do the right thing and shutdown the SPAM

[Timon]

The amount of SPAM and PORN hitting this site is just plain getting out of hand. This time I was greeted with pure porn images and that's totally unacceptable. There is no excuse that can be made why this site can't take care of the SPAM problem.

Before I go any further let me introduce my self. I'm John, aka Timon, one of the administrators and founding members of www.cngchat.com which in less than a year has become one of the most respected sites for Natural Gas powered vehicles on the Internet. We've done a lot of work blocking the SPAM problem on our site so I know from where I speak.

Cngchat runs vBulletin just as this site does although we're running version 3.7.3 and not the older 3.6. We put in the following configurations on our forum and since it's been completed it's unusual for us to get one SPAM a month that gets buy the checks and makes it to our users. Here are my suggestions on what this site should do.

1. Update to 3.7.3 which has more features to help stop spam.
   
2. Activate Akismet. This will drop over 90% of the spam that hits this site. It made a huge difference since we added to cngchat.com. Yes this does cost money but it not much, only a few dollars a month.
   
3. Verify everyones e-mail address. We do this on cngchat even before we added Akismet and it's makes a great deal of an improvement. Most spammers use false e-mail addresses so they won't verify. Cost, nothing.
   
4. Moderate new users until they have posted a few times. Most spammers would stick around if they find that they get moderated. Cost, a little moderator time.

We did this on chgchat and it works so there is no reason that it can't be done here. It will make your users happier and their children are not going to run into PORN images if they happen to click on this site.

Hopefully I'm not just talking to my self.

Please, do the right thing and add the above to this site.

 

[dhn]

Timon, I could not agree more with your observations.

I get bloody sick having to report all the spammers in private messages to Pedro2NR on a daily basis. Yesterday was the worst since I joined this board a year ago.

I get the feeling his hands are tied when it comes to changing code to adjust the board functionality as you mention in your post. It just seems the two admin persons, (John and Jason, I think) don't appear to care very much...

Pedro does what he can in deleting the posts I refer to him but when I log in between 6-7 am Eastern time and he resides in California, well, the crap is going to remain for hours.

There are other moderators on this board who do reside on the east coast and, I presume, have the power to delete posts (I'm a moderator on another tomtom forum and I have that ability there) but these moderators appear very seldomly in forums here.

Have you sent a private message to Pedro2NR? It may move things along. Dunno.

 

[Timon]

Timon, I could not agree more with your observations.

I get bloody sick having to report all the spammers in private messages to Pedro2NR on a daily basis. Yesterday was the worst since I joined this board a year ago.

I get the feeling his hands are tied when it comes to changing code to adjust the board functionality as you mention in your post. It just seems the two admin persons, (John and Jason, I think) don't appear to care very much...

Pedro does what he can in deleting the posts I refer to him but when I log in between 6-7 am Eastern time and he resides in California, well, the crap is going to remain for hours.

There are other moderators on this board who do reside on the east coast and, I presume, have the power to delete posts (I'm a moderator on another tomtom forum and I have that ability there) but these moderators appear very seldomly in forums here.

Have you sent a private message to Pedro2NR? It may move things along. Dunno.

I used to speak up on this every week but gave up when nothing got done. This time the SPAM was so bold that I had to speak up one more time in public. If something isn't done people are going to leave especially if someone sets up an alternative forum.

 

[FastKatt]

I'd like a link sent to me for the other TomTom forum...
I've been lucky that I can guess what topics to not click on to avoid the SPAM
I do agree, some of the money from the ads on the site needs to be earmarked for anti-spam.
If you can't post the link here, please PM it to me
Thanks!
Billy

 

[46jimbo]

Two other forums that I know of are:

PocketGPSWorld
http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=93

YourNav.com
http://www.yournav.com/

 

[dhn]

GPSReview forums:
http://www.gpsreview.net/forums/

(I'm a moderator in the TomTom section, for what that's worth )

 

[GAW]

Totally agree - more garbage today...

 

[Ricochet]

Totally unacceptable!

The amount of SPAM and PORN hitting this site is just plain getting out of hand. This time I was greeted with pure porn images and that's totally unacceptable.

I couldn't agree more! I certainly hope your suggestions are taken to heart by this site's admins.

 

[Arno]

Two other forums that I know of are:

PocketGPSWorld
http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=93

YourNav.com
http://www.yournav.com/

I didn't know about TT fora and started out with
(e-mail address removed)

After as couple of days the owner announced he would fold the group and someone else took over. Another poster then mentioned
https://www.expansys.com

There was plenty of stuff but no 930. When I butted in at a 920 thread I nearly got my head torn off.

A few days later another poster in the Yahoo group said yournav (see above quote by jimbo) is better. (There is a sub-group mytomtom , green instead of pink, that covers TT only.)

Reading a good thousand posts in a couple of days I finally started to get a picture and was able to ask and been given advice so that I could prepare for my trip to the UK, one week hence.

I then found a reference to this group checked a few threads but did not really get into it until quite some time after I got back and wasn't able to get ALG to work on my NA map.

I much prefer eMail groups or newsnet to fora as I can find saved posts very fast. Keyword searches are atrocious in any of the fora although this one is much better then the others.

 

[FastKatt]

Thanks guys!
I had PocketGPS, I'll check out the other 3

 

[Timon]

Please

Pleasae, let's keep on topic, too much spam.

The spam is getting worse by the day.
Please put in what I suggested and FIX the problem.

 

[gatorguy]

I moderate another gps forum using this same software. Over the wekend I spent hours blocking new members before they could spam. Checking signatures, web addresses and IP's was necessary all weekend and continuing this morning. The Russian spammers finally gave up, now they're coming from Holland. Over 100 spammers blocked in just over 24 hours. It's completely out-of-hand and more than a single mod should have to deal with. I don't know what the solution would be except for the Nuke option. Completely blocking new signups for 48 hours to see if they tire of the game. Check out thoroughly all new members in the meantime while not having to deal with new sign-ups as well.

 

[cputrdoc]

I live in California and don't usually get to my desk until about 10:00 a.m. Pacific time, so I've never noticed a spam problem here, but I know spammers and bots are getting more clever about how they collect and broadcast to email addresses/forums.

There are a bunch of tips for controlling spam in vBulletin (which powers this site) at http://www.marketingeric.com/25/vbulletin-spam-prevention-tips-and-tricks/

I hate to even suggest this because sometimes the most useful posts come from other countries (e.g. differences between NA and EU models), but since this is the unofficial site of TomTom for North America, what if you started blocking certain countries from posting? Or at least grab a spam block list (SBL) from SpamCop or one of the other spam blocking sites and restrict traffic either coming from those domains or registered with those domain email addresses.

 

[Pedro2NR]

Thank you, I will forward this to the admin

 

[Timon]

And the spam goes on .... spam goes on ...

This is getting really bad. The spams may get deleted but we still end up with then coming through the RSS feed. You would think the owners could spend $5 or $10 a month and use the spam blocking service I listed earlier.

Moderating new users for 5 or 10 posts would make one hell of a dent in the spam as well.

 

[dhn]

Timon, see at the bottom of the page your message is on is a link 'contact us'? That goes to the admins directly. Go for it. We do what we can but things could be better.

 

[Arno]

This is getting really bad. The spams may get deleted but we still end up with then coming through the RSS feed. You would think the owners could spend $5 or $10 a month and use the spam blocking service I listed earlier.

Moderating new users for 5 or 10 posts would make one hell of a dent in the spam as well.

Have you contacted the owner(s) [link at bottom of screen] and offered to pay for that and volunteered to do the moderation of new posts?

If not, you are wasting more band width than the spammers with this thread. I have ignored all of the spams but read all of the posts here as contributions by gaw, 46jimbo, Pedro2NR and specifically dhn are worthwile reading.

 

[dhn]

I have ignored all of the spams but read all of the posts here as contributions by gaw, 46jimbo, Pedro2NR and specifically dhn are worthwile reading.

Where do I send the money?

Thanks for the kind words.....after much bugging of Pedro by me and bugging of the admins by Pedro on my behalf, I was given mod's powers without the title (like a minister without portfolio, eh? )

The mods try very hard to keep this Board as spam/porn free as possible. For all users reading this post, if you click the exclamation mark under the user_id of the poster, an email goes to every moderator with a link to the offensive post. We appreciate the assistance greatly even if we don't thank each of you personally for your help.

 

[Timon]

The mods try very hard to keep this Board as spam/porn free as possible. For all users reading this post, if you click the exclamation mark under the user_id of the poster, an email goes to every moderator with a link to the offensive post. We appreciate the assistance greatly even if we don't thank each of you personally for your help.

And the mods go a really great job but they need help which is why the admins need to update vBulletin to 3.7.3, activate Akismet and set vBulletin to verify everyones e-mail address. I still think that all new users first few posts should be moderated.

And no way does this thread use more bandwidth than the spam.

 

[PSJ]

The owner(s) of this site really need to address this problem !

Some spam is " PORN " with pictures !

And this can and will get some visitors to this site in serious trouble at work !