There was a change made recently in the first-post approval process, which has let more spam bots into the forum. Moderators are aware of the spam issue, but we have to delete the posts one-by-one, which isn't really feasible when there are 1000+ topics.
I've contacted the OpenCart forum support person and Daniel about this issue, so hopefully they'll get it sorted soon. Your patience is appreciated in the meantime. No need to report posts at this point --- I'm compiling a list of the spam bot users, so their posts will get mass-deleted as soon as a forum admin does the task.
Thanks

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This must be Daniel and company's number one priority. Ahead of OC bug fixes, ahead of new OC development, ahead of their day jobs, ahead of everything else, or all is lost. Do they need volunteer moderators to go in and ban spammers and erase hundreds of spams? If there are enough of us, it should go quickly.
I think Daniel has found the forums that had the first-post approval turned off, so he's re-enabling that. That should stop the flood, and hopefully one of them will mass-delete the spam posts in the next few days.
Yeah, it's not unreasonable to keep the H-bombs out of the hands of mere moderators, and only let admins (usually more trusted) be able to wreak such havoc. So, do the admins see the spam reports and are they authorized to quickly act to ban users and vaporize all their posts? When I submit a report that such-and-such posting is just the tip of a 700 spam iceberg, can I count on an admin getting on the case quickly? There seems to have been an awfully long delay between the first reports of trouble and the final cleanup. It appears that word spreads quickly in the spam world about which forums aggressively wipe out spammers, and which don't (i.e., are worth spamming). You can't wait to start bailing out the water until the hole in the boat has been plugged -- you'll sink first.Johnathan wrote: ↑Tue Sep 26, 2017 4:35 amYou'd think that, but there's not. We used to have a one-click ban function, but when the forum was updated to a newer phpBB version, that functionality was lost (and the plugin author hasn't updated it, so it's not usable). Forum admins can mass-delete posts by a user, but moderators have to do it one-by-one.
If you do report spam posts, moderators should handle it within 24 hours, but forum admins don't check the reports every day (since that's the job of moderators). If there is another mass-post, I'll alert a forum admin and they can handle it, but it may take longer than 24 hours since every is in different time zones (and checks the forum at different times).
(I keep asking them to make me an admin so I can do it myself, but so far it's not working.)

looks, nobody really seems to care about anymore.
What a Shame !

Ernie
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Please don't send me OC Forum Personal Messages, just contact: jti@jacob.ch
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This way we can at least understand all these daily posts.

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Why are you are not throttling posts? People shouldn't be allowed to post 3+ new topics a minute like you are letting them do. Also, they shouldn't be allowed to post a topic that is identical to their last. That would knock down 80% of it right there, at least making the forum useable again......
Additionally, there is no honeypot field on the login page. This is a hidden field that automatically rejects and temporarily bans the login if automation fills in this field. Many bots will fill it in resulting in a much higher success rate. What are you doing to combat this at login?
Manually trying to delete posts like these is a losing battle. Use regex heuristics to block them at POST and more specific heuristics to delete them en mass. They are basically all the same right?
I am confused as to why people who develop a massively popular ecom solution arent able to combat simple forum spam.
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I've notified Daniel and the forum support person about the new spam, so hopefully they can do something about it soon.
this place. It just leaves a very bad impression, if someone does not even seem to
be able, to keep a forum in working condition, if 'honest' people come here, eager
to find out more about OC, and then be confronted with this mess. And for existing
Forum Users, it's sure not helpful, and it does not add to motivation, to spend much
time around here, under the circumstances, as they exist, for some time already ...

Ernie
Please don't send me OC Forum Personal Messages, just contact: jti@jacob.ch
---
OC 1.5.6.5 LIGHT Test Site: http://www.bigmax.ch/shop/
OC 1.5.6.5 V-PRO Test Site: http://www.openshop.li/shop/
My Github OC Site: https://github.com/IP-CAM
2'750 FREE OC Extensions on the World's largest Github OC Repository Archive Site.
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