also, does this mean that every single photo that is downloaded goes straight to the 'home page' gallery?

We haven't had an update from You Guys in a while, but we do have at least six pages of spam (some over 12 hours old)...

Can you let us know what is up?

I agree with the pp.  There is a ton of spam going on and some that is old!

I must admit, it's getting pointless even coming here now. The Decorating forum has one cake related post in the first 5 and a half pages!!

Changing to this new forum has not been a good thing :(

75 Pages of Spam... well there is more, but since at that point I could only skip ahead three pages at a time I wasn't going to continue...

I am not flagging it all... I flagged about a dozen... I don't have time to flag it all...

Whatever you are doing for the spam obviously isn't working... 

I thought there was some hold on new messages and that they must be approved before they show... if so, who is approving the spam?

Ugh!  They keep posting every few seconds!  I can't even find a real post.  Maybe it's a good thing for me, I need to clean my house anyway...

This appears at the top of page 122.  Preceded by 12 pages of spam.  #spamfilterfail

Well actually page 12.  Still no edit functions.  And I can not delete my own posts.

 Hi Leah!

Wow. Now THAT was a lot of spam today lol

Whew! That was a LOT of spam!

I have just finished rolling out some updates that should help fight future spam attacks. 

1. New Users will be required to submit a correct reCaptcha to join.

2.  If you have less than a few posts, you will be required to submit a reCaptcha on new forum posts.

Thank you for everyone that has flagged posts, and alerted us whenever new spam comes in. Fighting spam is an ongoing battle, and an issue we take very seriously. So your help in keeping CC clean is greatly appreciated.

"lotta spam" seriously!

awesome, thank you!

and thank you for quelling the new batch of spam that already occured

I do appreciate the addition of some fixes, especially since there was 75 pages plus of it this morning...

But there is another 5 pages of it right now... There will be more by morning probably... All of these "users" are apparently finding their way past the captcha and the limit on the number of posts...

Are new users messages still being held until approved?  Because if they are supposed to be, then how are they getting around that too?

I realize there are still spam issues but when might we be able to download pictures directly to a post?  And an edit button is high on my wish list as well.

I do agree that we do need to be able to post a picture in the postings and and EDIT button is a good idea...

I still think we need at least also maybe some type of weekly update as to how the fixes are going... One post on this thread for example...

And there is still way more spam than there should be here... I have never seen it like this anywhere else... It is a daily two page minimum it seems... This does seem rather ridiculous... 

Hopefully all the fixes are being worked on still and that maybe some people who are people can be recognized as people and the robots can be recognized as such and kept out...

Clearly they are not working.  

Sometimes a business needs to pay for professional help.

We are professional help.  There seems to be this idea that Jackie is primarily a cake maker who dabbles in coding.  The opposite is more accurate.  Jackie has been a contract programmer for over 15 years, she is the "professional help" who is hired to fix other people's problems.  She is just one programmer and I think people underestimate how long it takes to code solutions to problems.  

The challenge is, once spammers target you as a posting platform, they find ways around the blocks. You don't just install some publicly add-on and the spam stops.

Some Examples:

1. You realize all the spam is coming from India, so you block all IP ranges in India (which also blocks legitimate users from India).  The spam stops for a day, then the spammers switch to using global proxies so you don't know they are from India.

2. You implement captcha to stop the bots.  The bots stop for a day, the spammers do it by hand for a day while they write a new bot to overcome the captcha.

3. We go to a policy of having the first post of all new users held for moderation. This will slow them down as they will have to pose as legit users for the first post.  In the meantime it vastly increases the manpower needed for moderation on a daily basis and impacts the ability for a new visitor with a question from getting immediate help.  

#1 and #2 have already been done, we have captcha on the first 5 posts of a new user and we have blocked all traffic from India and most of the Phillipines at this point.  Blocking whole parts of the whole is not a viable long term approach, it is a band-aid.

#3 is being worked on, it is a large chunk of code.

It is easy to say "hire more programmers to help", but if you know what good programmers cost to hire, and you know what a website this size costs to keep online relative to the ad revenue it generates you would know that it is not easy to find budget to add staff when you are not some venture backed project that can burn through someone else's cash.

Jackie is working on it everyday, and I assure you the spam causes more problems in our day than it does in yours, so we have every incentive and desire to see it stop getting through.

Fine, Heath. But sometimes specialized help is needed. For instance, in the medical world we have GP's who can be excellent but send patients to a specialist if the problem is not their primary strength.

I am not familiar with the kind of spam problem you have; however, I visit many forums and have never seen this onslaught. I hope you can find the solution.

^^^^^^ This.

I would imagine that there must be a drop in ad revenue as people can't be bothered to wade through spam and a site that is not as useful and easy to use as it once was - on a minute level there are about 2 dozen people from the UK thread who only come on now to see if anything is working better, see it's not and go away again without doing anything else. I can't think we are the only people who are doing this.

Surely at some point getting help would be the lesser of two evils. 

Update on the ongoing spam battle!

I have rolled out an update this morning, that may affect new users/those with low post counts.

To help combat the spam, new rate limits have been created for creating new accounts (by IP address) and posting limits.  If you are a first time poster, you will be time limited on how many posts you can make within a specific time frame.

My hope is that legitimate new users will still be able to create accounts and post content, while creating barriers for spam floods.

awesome -- appreciate the update and the hard work

@Jackie, could you limit the number of new posts per day rather than a time frame?  They are still able to post up to 12 or more per screen name depending on how determined they are.  Real people do not start very many new threads on any given day.  They will reply many times in a day, but not start many new threads.

Well, the spammers are back again, I see :)

I honestly don't know what they think they are getting from this? Seriously, has anyone on here clicked on their links?? Is anyone on here crazy enough to risk a virus from them? Why do they think people on a site about baking and decorating cakes is interested in this stuff??

Spammers, if you're reading....NO ONE IS CLICKING!! MOVE ALONG!! NOTHING TO SEE HERE!! THESE AREN'T THE DROIDS YOU'RE LOOKING FOR!!

There, that should do it ;)

Why have the comments from people unhappy with the current situation (the two or three posts before coinuk's)  been removed? 

It's not the first time this has happened. I was censored when I wasn't singing the praises of the 'improved' site. They weren't offensive or rude posts (mine wasn't  either), they were just stating  that this is getting ridiculous. 

Where are all the categories in the pic gallery?

@Lizzybug78

This is despicable behavior on CC's part, and it has happened many times before. If they can't handle legitimate concers, what hope is there for an open and honest forum?

Seriously?? Bad form, CC! This forum is hard enough atm with all the spam, and, whilst we appreciate the effort going into stopping it, censoring your fans is never a good idea!

I still don't understand what was wrong with the old forum software? And why, when there are soooooo many great forums out there, this one is so lacking in features and capabilities. It's a forum. Looks aren't the important aspect, the functionality and the people on it are.