Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Thanks everyone for your kind comments, it’s nice to know that you appreciate our efforts in looking after the Forum.

Just one point, I said to keep reporting the spam (frittered or not, ha, ha). However, if one user has already reported spam, then there is no need for anyone else to do the same. One message is enough to alert me to the problem and I delete what is there.

Thanks again for helping to keep the nuisances at bay.

Thanks for all the hard work Norah It's quite a challenge when these spammers get a grip and no-one expects that you can't be on here all the time. Thanks for looking after us.

Norah, thanks for all your valiant efforts.

PS - Bump!

Fancy bumping into you Malone

Just adding my appreciation for all the work that Ash and Norah must be putting in to get rid of the tiresome spam. I'm guessing that it's not easy to defeat this other than a manual process. If these people join the forum the same as everyone else, who can tell at that time what their intentions are ?

Most spam comes from India, China, and Indonesia. It is possible to identify new user registrations from these countries based on their IP . I am not sure whether it is feasible to ask new users to provide additional verification before activating their membership. That would be a time-consuming ,laborious vetting task !

My last post was replying to Meursault.

Cerasus, I’m sorry but it’s not feasible to do as you suggest. The Crossword Solver site is free to users and, as such, we only have a small staff (ME) to look after the Admin side. Ash and his merry team of computer boffins deal with any technical issues.

I mostly manage to delete the spam but if there is a serious influx (Korean spam a couple of years ago when 100’s were being posted at one time) then Ash devices some means of preventing the spam reaching the Forum.

The trouble was that the measures taken to thwart the spammers had a knock on effect on users being unable to post.

Ash managed to sort this but it is a fine balancing act between thwarting and allowing bona fideusers to access the Forum.

If it gets any worse, then Ash is going to consider the next move, watch this space.

I do appreciate all you and Ash do for this excellent free forum. I certainly do not expect you to vet potential members. That would be too much of a task. I was just replying to Meursault just how time-consuming it would be.
We members will continue to report and bump legitimate threads . Thanks again

Cerasus, may I nominate you as "bumper-in-chief" ?