Spammers

2 posts, 2 contributors

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torana DAFNE Graduate
Royal North Shore Hospital, St Leonards, NSW
53 posts

This is the letter sent to DAFNE central below. We all need to put in an effort to save our site.
“Your forum site is being destroyed by spam. Today there was a drug spam for heroin and MMDA on your diabetic site. It’s highly disappointing. I have already written to you regarding this problem and did not receive a reply on this urgent matter. The forum requires more funding and resources and clearly this issue needs to be taken to the management and board ASAP. I expect a response.”

marke Site Administrator
South East Kent PCT
675 posts

Hi Torana, You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about the site. It is NOT run by the DAFNE Programme but independently by two people i.e Simon and myself. This latest mass attack of SPAM occurred when we were both on holiday and so we could do little about it. I am now back and have removed all of the SPAM from the forums.
The difficulty is how do we stop it. It is not automated as they have to register an account by making a number of selections. We could insist on an email verification when signing up but this has a number of issues. I won't bore you with them as they are very technical but its hard to block people on that basis. I have thought about blocking normal 'users' that don't have a centre code but we don't want to bar any diabetics with a real need for help or advice. My only hope is a more intelligent blocking mechanism but that will take time to design and implement. Believe me it is as annoying for us as it is you. However unless somebody finds a big pot of money somewhere and given its the NHS and home users not very likely we are just going to have to live with it until they get bored.