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That she and Nathan were on cahoots with him during the Chloe thing. I wasn’t watching that much.
I have only watched once in the last month… it’s all dragging on way too long. ***Yawn***
I hadn’t watched in 3 weeks or so. Had yesterday’s episode on in the background as I was at home. I don’t think I’ve missed much of anything.
I hate when stories move that slowly – but that’s SOP for the soap biz.
Jenn
There are forums on the forum spam website, but they all speak in technobabble and I’m not that savvy.
Based on the spam I’ve seen, it’s mostly fake ads for "male enhancement" drugs but usually clicking on a link will unleash some malware onto your computer.
Based on the email addresses – some were rather umm, interesting. Implied "trolling" for sex, etc., "mail order brides"… all kinds of bizarre stuff.
My business website had fewer registrations, but more actual spam posts -needless to say I cleaned that up too but there were only a dozen or so registrants, and one or two posted multiple messages as "comments" to my shop’s blog and newsletters. Links to whatever – I deleted them.
The worst part of the problem is that tons of spammers use Gmail. So do I, and so do a lot of people. So I can’t just ban everybody @gmail or that would ban a lot of legitimate users. So I have to look at each one. There were some domains I banned completely… anyone @(domain).ru (Russia), and anyone at some of the weird domains. Some I think are fake but the users registering can’t complete their activation because this system is set to send a verification email that they have to click a link within, to complete their membership activation. If somebody registers with a fake email address, they don’t receive the verification email – so that’s one way to slow them down a bit.
We’ll see how it goes from here. In hindsight I wish I’d set it up that way (manual verification) in the first place, but I was trying to make less work for myself. Ironically in the end it’s less work to look at each one individually and hit the "allow" or "delete" key
Still much easier than the old board. Since I’d closed registrations on the old main board for a long time, this was never an issue in the past.
Jenn
Is that out of the hundreds that "registered" only a few ever posted. I think a lot of it is done by "spambots" – automated programs that register on forums.
I found a neat site called stopforumspam.com and I can put in any user ID and/or email address and/or IP address and if they’ve been reported as spammers to that site, they have a record of it. I compared almost every registered user from here, to their database, and I banned/deleted every one that had a record.
There’s a way to submit info to the site too but I didn’t quite get that figured out yet… but if all I had was the email address, that would give me the IP address (internet address) and country of origin. If I was in doubt, I deleted.
Took me about a week here and there, doing a few when I could. At least now I can monitor who registers, and so they can’t just sneak on. Sometimes I get 10-20 new registrations overnight. Easier to check them as I go than to have to go back and review every single one and go through the motions to delete them.
Lessons learned!
Jenn
You can quit watching for almost any length of time, and never miss a thing!
Welcome back, Nora!
Jenn
IMO it’s unfair to compare Beijing summer games ceremonies to winter ceremonies anywhere.
As a Canadian I found the ceremonies to be culturally significant, and the celebreties were appropriate – although I didn’t like the Bryan Adams duet with Nelly whomever…
And I wasn’t big on the arrangement for O Canada. The singer has a lovely voice, but I didn’t like the interpretation of the anthem… but hey, we’re all critics. I sure as heck couldn’t have done better.
KD – she gained weight a while back (at least last time I saw her) and for years she’s dressed with her own rather androgenous style. That’s just who she is. She’s got an amazing voice, that’s for sure.
I was very glad that they had Terry Fox’ father run with the torch in Vancouver yesterday and his mom, Betty carried the Olympic Flag. For any Canadian over about age 40, Terry Fox was an inspiration in his Marathon of Hope and he put fundraising for cancer research on the map in Canada.
I thought the ceremonies were true to showing the culture of the host nation. It’s not all about who spends the most, has the most glitz and glamour or special effects – it’s about the people and the country hosting the Games, and IMO, the producers achieved that.
A lot of my American friends seem to have been disappointed with it. That’s unfortunate, because I think they missed the message. Canadians aren’t grandstanders in the first place, so to have tried to upstage any prior effort, would have been, well, Un-Canadian, eh!
Jenn
At the site’s status report – it reports on every time there’s an activity – somebody posts, somebody logs in etc. It seems like some of the deleted accounts are still trying to log in every 30 minutes or so – that *has* to be automatic. I’ve had half a dozen "new applications" this morning… and I accidentally deleted one legit account (My apologies, Bevken86!) but she’s back up and registered again.
It’s been a real eye-opener that’s for sure – never had these issues on the old main board (closed membership) and the free forum – probably had some sort of blocking software on it.
Hopefully I haven’t canned any other legit member… if I did by mistake I hope they follow the instructions in the "deleted" email and contact me to get back on.
Jenn
Is that only a handful of spammers have actually posted. I am not sure how it works, spambots "register" and I’m guessing that later on either another spambot or a person, uses the account to post spam on the board.
In hindsight I should have set it up to manually check each registration in the first place. Would have saved myself a lot of work – because it’s a bit time consuming to go back into each account and check it after the fact. Once we set up the forums to accept registrations, it was all automatic – I didn’t have to do anything, anyone who applied got access.
Now when somebody registers, before they can post, I get an email notification that someone has registered, and I have to manually approve or delete them. That gives me a chance to check them out first and decide whether to approve or deny them.
I’m using a website called stopforumspam.com and I can check user ID, email address and IP address – if any given user has been reported to that site (their info comes up when I search them), I delete them. Apparently it’s a huge problem.
I’m getting a few on my business website too, but nowhere near as many as here. Mostly ads for cheap Viagra or whatnot – same sorts of things that my email spam filter picks up.
I’m sure I deleted about 200 accounts yesterday. Sometimes one can tell from the email address they register with – lots from Russia or other Eastern European countries, some for "auto loans", some from a lesbian pictures website… all kinds of weird stuff. I can add filters to screen out certain email domains etc., but a surprising amount come from gmail addresses – I can’t really ban all gmail users – I use gmail myself.
Thankfully they all haven’t started posting – that would be a huge mess… so I’m going to clean out the "members" as best I can, and prevent new ones from signing up.
Seems pointless – how many people would actually buy stuff from somebody that was spamming them? I know I wouldn’t…
Some of the links they post contain malware and viruses, spyware and all that other fun stuff – so never click a link in a spam post or email.
Jenn
I think most of them are spambots… not actual people trying to register.
Half-dozen more this morning, deleted before they can gain access.
I’ll try to purge more junk today.
Jenn
I purged a bunch more tonight at work since it was quiet. I’m going through them alphabetically – I just started the "Ds"… it’s astonishing how many there are…
We had about 950 members – in all reality there may be 200 or so when I’m done, based on how many I am deleting from the spam list. There’s a website that helps people stop forum spam, and I’m cross-referencing every user’s email with it – if they show up there, they are GONE. I’m starting to spot patterns too – that helps.
I got 18 new requests for accounts overnight (they need to be approved first now), and none of them was a legit user.
Things that make you shake your head… at least doing it this way now, nips the problem in the bud – they can’t post til I grant access – my delete button may be worn out before this is all done.
Jenn
I’ve fixed it so that new people signing up have to be approved by me before they can post. I’ve already deleted 10 or so applications – I’m seeing patterns in the email addresses of the spammers – so if I get a funky application, I just delete it.
There are still likely some that got through before I changed the system – with over 900 people signed up I can’t screen them all, so if you see spam, please just email me and I’ll get rid of it, and the "member" posting it.
Jenn
The post and the member are deleted! I appreciate the heads up – don’t be shy to email me – I’m not on the board but a few times per day so an email will get my attention to remove such junk.
Cheers,
Jenn
Adrienne will be back to patch things up with Justin, then Bo can patch things up with Hope and all will be right with the world again.
That *could* set the stage for some adventures… at least one could hope!
Jenn
I copied/pasted this from a cached search page – it came up on Beth’s Days Page as a cached file but the page is no longer there…so I can’t link the source… This was when Roman was in jail for Renée Dumonde’s murder, and he was being framed, so Bo and Alice sprang into action:
Working with Alice Horton, Bo laced one of her doughnuts with a drug that would induce a sort of heart attack. Alice delivered the doughnut to Roman in jail, and he promptly suffered an attack that left him barely breathing. Meanwhile, Bo snuck aboard the prison’s ambulance and knocked out the guard that was with Roman. Then, while the ambulance was briefly stopped because of Alice had conveniently stalled her car in the middle of the road, Bo quietly escaped with Roman. No one was the wiser. And now, Roman could work on finding out who was trying to frame him.
I LOVED that story! Nobody would have suspected Alice of any chicainery… but Bo knew better!
Jenn
