Scamming flood.

[Kyra Yamato]

Hello, I've noticed that scammers are begining to flood TTG and spreading fast what can we do to resolve this?

[Xtreme]

More mods I suppose, It's getting even worse even though bloodogres a mod and Joestann is paying attention to the runescape section

[kingikz1001]

Well i think Questello should also pay a visit at least once a day to the Runescape section of TTG, and then i think a admin, and 2 mods can Ban/Suspend/warn the members.

[Josetann]

Please don't bother guestolo, I know he's an admin now, but he's here mainly for the Tech Clinic section.  I don't want to bother him with other areas of the site, else we might scare him away.  He's a real asset to the site, but just in the Tech Clinic area (if you have a problem with your computer, he's the guy to go to).

I'll admit that I don't really know much about RuneScape.  A few people posted about it in Frag Fest, the wannabe scammers came, that brought more people in (looking for hacks and what-not), I had to assign a moderator for that area quick (the reason kohacker is a mod), then eventually it got its own section and Allanon as a mod.  Now bloodogre is a mod, and really that's it.  I just scan it when I have time and take care of the obvious stuff.

I am able to do permanent bans (a suspension until 2037 or whatever is virtually as good, only difference is they don't show up as banned under their username but otherwise it has the same effect), and ip bans.  What'd help me is if someone created a list of users on this site that are definite scammers.  I started going through the scammer list on here, but none of the first several users were even valid users.  I'm guessing it's a list of users on various sites.  If you could copy/paste the user's displayed name, and perhaps a quick note if you suspect this person has multiple usernames (in which case I'd need to do an ip ban), that'd help out a lot.

Do note, that I don't want to ban someone just because of one or two scam reports (unless perhaps they scammed one of the trusted members on this site).  It's easy for someone to make up a story, even screenshots can be easily faked.  So either they needed to scam a trusted person, or there are multiple reports by different people (if you think the multiple reports may be by the same person using different names, mention that and I can check their ip pretty easily).

That's just my "rules" for reporting these people to me.  Feel free to put them on a possible scammer list, let people know to be wary, whatever, even if they're not a definite scammer.  That's fine.  I just don't want to ban unless we're say, 95% sure they're a scammer.  If it's iffy, give them the benefit of the doubt (but feel free to let people know we're a bit leary of that user).  If it's definite, their ass is outta here.

[Xtreme]

I think its going to be back to normal soon, Zspec is back... and not many scams are a actualy fallen for, Joes has a point about easily editing screenshots though http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'\' />, I could do it on paint and thats a program everyone has

[Kyra Yamato]

what about the threads that people make like 4 of, someone should lock  all but one of there spamed threads, and lock the ones where the old and lame scams are asking for passes.

[Josetann]

Yes, if someone replies to a really old scam thread, it should just be locked.  I want to keep the threads there though (i.e., not just delete them), so that a complete newbie who comes to the site who would fall for this scam (whether here or elsewhere) can read the whole thing, get excited, then further down see where we shout out how it's a scam!  So next time they see a similar post somewhere else, and no one's shouted out "Scam scam!", they'll remember seeing one just like it and they found it was just a stupid scam.

Then again, I've seen a few old ones pop up where someone pointed out the scam, then later on someone asks how to go about doing whatever it is the first post said to do...some people just can't be taught anything.

If I catch a scam thread and it's new, with little to no replies, I just nuke it.  Once it's been here a few days, I keep it but edit the post and maybe lock it too.  My reasoning (and let me know if you think I'm wrong), is if a thread has been on the forum for a few days, google probably picked it up and indexed it.  It may show up in some search results.  If the thread's deleted and someone tries to click on the link from google, it'll give an error.  What do I do when I click a link and whatever was supposed to be there isn't anymore?  I hit the back button (to return to the search results) and click on the cached link, to show a cached version of that page.  So someone else who does this, will see the old thread before it was deleted, and I wouldn't have bothered editing it pointing out the scam if I'm going to delete it...so they may fall for it.  That's just my thinking, and I could be wrong, feel free to voice your opinions on that.

[watever123]

well there's a list of definate scammers pinned already..

on a side note, man u write a lot bro!

[Josetann]

[quote name=\'watever123\' post=\'212315\' date=\'Oct 3 2006, 03:17 PM\']well there's a list of definate scammers pinned already..

on a side note, man u write a lot bro![/quote]

That's the list I'm talking about.  I started going through the list to ban them all, but they were all invalid users.  So my guess is it's a list that's used for multiple sites, not just this one.  If a list could be made of just definite scammers, and just ones on this site, I can go through and ban 'em pretty easily.

[watever123]

arite well i'll see wat i can do, and the pinned list mite just have spelling errors of the usernames...therefore making it harder to search for em.

[bloodogre]

yea some probally r spelling errors
its bassicly because ppl speel them wrong and i just paste them onto the thread