On Scammers and Spammers

Dan Miller

cranky canoeist
Staff member
Unfortunately, life on the Internet requires dealing with scammers and spammers, and the WCHA site is no exception. The WCHA webmasters waste considerable time combatting these folks, and unfortunately that draws us away from making constructive improvements to the website.

Scammers - As with business dealings in any part of your life, be aware of whom you are potentially doing business with. The WCHA Classifieds are trolled by scammers who'd like nothing more than part you from your hard-earned cash. The most common scam is that they will offer to send you a cashier's check or money order for more than the amount, and ask you to wire the difference back to them. Their shipper will then come to pick up your canoe. Of course, the original check is no good, and if you've wired them any money, you will never see it again. These folks will respond to emails and try to convince you they are legitimate. If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is...

Spammers - Spamming must be a lucrative business (perhaps more so than canoe building) because we are simply inundated by it by email, in the classifieds, and on the forums. Truth is, the vast majority of new registrations to the forums are spammers. Despite stepping up registration validation, we are still getting them. Rest assured that any spam that makes it onto our forums will be deleted at the first opportunity by one of the three webmasters. But remember, we are folks with other jobs, demands and so on, and do like to sleep once in a while, so a bum message may linger for a few hours. It will be deleted. In the meantime, just ignore it. There is no need to reply to spam messages on the board, or to email us about them (unless they've been there a couple days). The next step in combatting them would be to go to full moderation of the forums, and since that would really slow down discourse, I doubt anyone would like to see that take place...
 
Dan Miller said:
In the meantime, just ignore it. There is no need to reply to spam messages on the board, or to email us about them (unless they've been there a couple days).

Sorry Dan:(
 
Dan, I have made my own personal web site using HTML and have done some editing on a web site for our Community Center. If there is something I can do to help, let me know...
CYA, Joe
 
Joe,

We have always welcomed submissions for the web site. If you would like to contribute something, feel free.

Dan
 
2 simple solutions I've found

that may not work on this board depending on how its set up, but in the online discussion groups I moderate the person who wants to join the list has to ask first, and if their screen name has bad words in it then I don't let them on, or if I suspect they are scammers/spammers I send them a quick email asking a canoe question or two, usually I never hear back from them, or if I do it's someone who really wants to be on the list. Secondly, the first post from each new member is moderated, so it doesn't go to the list until it comes through me first. This is onerous, I know, but I know a couple good lists, "freestyle canoe", for example, that have been ruined by the pornograhers. And that didn't need to happen, but the list moderator never responded to any offers to help moderate, so the spammers took it over. As someone else said on another thread, "that's my opinion and I'm stuck with it" :)
Andy
 
I've joined a couple sites lately that require approval and they provide a password before the site can be posted to, and they also ask for real names to be used.

Dan
 
Tim is going to look into how this might be implemented in this software. It is unfortunate that we've reached the level where we have to resort to this.
 
Dan, I meant that if I can help removing scammers, etc. I am retired and I check this and other similar sites multiple times daily so I might be of help in removing some of the unwanted stuff. I too want to keep this site clean...
Thanks, Joe
 
Tim has implemented the option to moderate new users. This of course will require us to sometimes guess who legitlmate new members are. Hopefully this will help to decrease the level of spam our users see, while at the same time not detering the good guys too much.
 
I know I speak for many of us, especially those of us to whom this nonsense is transparent, in thanking you Dan, Tim, and Benson for your [volunteer] efforts on our behalf. Tom
 
Thanks for the kind words Tom.

Benson and Dan really do all the work here these days. Though I hang around and do what I can, they carry the yeoman's share of the work.

Hopefully this new method of allowing users to the forums will not let in too many bad guys, and won't discourage any new members we "kill" who are actually valid members...

Fortunately the bulk of our daily new membership requests are using email addresses that are easily idenfitied as from SPAMmers - though I'm sure we'll let some through who should not come through, and we'll kill some that should...

-t
 
spam

I'll ditto Tom's comments, and add that, as your efforts are as volunteers, rather than paid staff, I appreciate it tenfold. THANK YOU!

So why isn't SPAMming considered a capital offense?
 
Kudos to Dan (I think) who blew away a spammer who sneaked through the other day trying to sell motorcycle stuff. I must have signed on immediately after the guy posted and the post was gone in a New York minute.

-Chuck
 
I bought a V-Twin Harley engine from that guy and installed it in my Charles River. While the canoe is now a bit more difficult to toss onto the top of the car, it'll blow away anything else on the water. :) :eek:

Wood-ingly Yours,
Rich Briere
 
Toilet seat classifieds

I'ts amazing to see the brazen crap that get's tagged to legitimate forums.
I think that there should be a new classified category here for royal toilet seats (oh, sets).Aucoc silver,Antique French silver toilet set made by Aucoc in Paris
This antique "French toilet seat" is with out a doubt the best one we have ever seen. :D
I wonder if it's sea worthy?
 
the toilet seat thread was deleted?:eek: i was looking for a gift for swmbo for valentine's day. it's just what she always wanted.:D
 
bob goeckel said:
the toilet seat thread was deleted?:eek: i was looking for a gift for swmbo for valentine's day. it's just what she always wanted.:D

Things are not usually deleted completely from a computer as Monica Lewinski and Linda Tripp found out. This advertisement was posted and deleted four times in a week. It appears to still be available as item number 2704 from http://boxes.oneofakindantiques.com if you really want to pay $18,500 for it.

Benson
 
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WCHA Class Ads scam attempts

Just received the third response in a week to our Canoe for Sale ad, asking in substandard English for price and condition of the "above item" (both were stated in the listing).

One query came from a .uk domain. Did they plan to paddle it back to England? :rolleyes:

Whatever their little game is, I am not stupid enough to play it.

So, to avoid attracting any more attention from other bottom feeders, I've just deleted the ad. Won't be trying the ClassAd section again, either.

Darn shame things have gotten to this point; wish these fools would stop spoiling things for the honest/legit people out there.

A.
 
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