We are being targeted

…by some newly registered discussion board members who are not members of DPW and are periodically posting irrelevant, generic comments. You know which ones I mean. My guess is that they are attempting to establish a presence here in order to eventually post products for sale. Please flag any posts you believe fall into this category, so I can delete them. Thanks.

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@Connie_McLennan, thank you for staying on top of this! I am sorry that any of your time has to be taken up in fighting this.

The software used for this forum is uniquely secure against automated spam, which is a scourge of most forums, however, as Connie has pointed out, these spammers are committed and spend the time building the posting history required to earn forum trust. Because of this, the software is not able to identify their posts as spam.

Our only recourse then, is for all of us to flag any questionable posts, as Connie has requested. Once flagged, I can further investigate and then disable both the spammers’ DPW registrations and their ArtTalk accounts to keep them from further posting.

I have already done so with the three accounts responsible for all the spammy posts so far identified.

Thank you in advanced for everyone’s help with this!

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Hi, I have been seeing these spam-type comments for some time and have been uncertain what to do about them…I used to flag suspect posts on other forums in the past but was usually ignored. This is just an observation but I’ve often noticed that these spammers have a liking for forums where posts are either infrequent or just “light” in numbers…in the end (sometimes) the forums get over-run by them. I’ve also checked out a few of the posters here at DPW and yes they don’t have paintings on view, they’re just here to make peculiar comments and post photos of unknown artwork.

Thanks for your comment. I check the forum daily, have also seen them for awhile, and wasn’t sure what to do. Didn’t want to be rude to a legitimate participant based on language deficit, but I will delete more aggressively now.

I usually only check the forum weekly and began to notice these types of post around June. When I saw repeated posting from one particular “individual” I decided to check it out on the internet. I was concerned with what I found and did respond to their last post. In a polite way I said I didn’t understand what they were asking and I simply wanted clarification. Instead of responding through the forum they sent me an angry email and removed the post that I responded to. I now see that all of their posts have been removed.

In addition to this response I received another angry email from a different poster, one I in which I never interacted with. I see that their posts have also been removed.

These posts made me feel uncomfortable, and the angry emails only confirmed my ill feelings. It was all so weird, I guess I should have reported these incidents to David or Sophie.

I removed all of the posts I could find by two individuals. One had three accounts under three different names. The ISP’s were in Hong Kong. For all I know, they all could have been the same person.