• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Spammers invading Fauna

M

Mike Greathouse

Reptilian Dreams
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Anyone else notice an increase lately in the number of spammers that are creating accounts and posting ads in forums other then the appropriate classified sections? I guess this is partial fallout from the relaxed ruleset that is in effect.

Here are two that have surfaced in the past day or two.
Their ads look very similar. My guess is that an IP check would probably confirm some type of relationship between the two. There was another one last week, which posted a similar ad in about 6 different forums. I think those have already been deleted.

This one was posted on The Board of Inquiry by foster2g1

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86148


This one was posted in the Ball Pythons Classifieds by crut

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86293

Is there anything that can done to curb this?
In my opinion, it degrades the site.
 
It's not anything unique to Fauna. Many websites/forums I go to get those same exact posts. I try to get them as soon as I see them but obviously we miss a few. Send me a PM when you see one and I will take care of them. Those two have been nuked.
 
Thanks Dennis,
I have also reported this individual to Yahoo.
At the very least, he will have to set up a new account both there and here to continue.
 
This sort of thing is happening to nearly ALL of my sites. I delete dozens of spam entries from FaunaTopSites alone each day. Luckily it's not especially a chore to do so.

Many, MANY more are blocked simply because of the email verification upon registration on the vBulletin based sites, otherwise it would be MUCH worse. The spammers do not often use valid email addresses so they cannot post at all since their account is never verified and registration completed.

And my spam filters (both on the server and in my mail reader) weed out so much junk it's ridiculous.
 
It's definitely a plague.

I just started using the SpamAssassin filters which come with the FaunaNet Hosting package and I was amazed at how well they do at filtering out all of the nonsense.

Just when I get my email under control, it starts showing up here.

Thanks again to Dennis for your prompt attention and removal of the offenders, and to Rich for preventing all that we don't see.
 
Mike Greathouse said:
Anyone else notice an increase lately in the number of spammers that are creating accounts and posting ads in forums other then the appropriate classified sections? I guess this is partial fallout from the relaxed ruleset that is in effect.
Click to expand...


Mike, just out of curiosity, how would you figure the "relaxed ruleset" having a bearing on the wave of spammers? I could see that being the case if the majority of them were being posted in the BOI, but for all intents and purposes, NOTHING has changed elsewhere that would have inhibited spammers from doing then what they are doing now.

Just curious if I am missing something important........ :)
 
Good point - I guess I didn't think that all the way through.
I just don't remember seeing these as often in the past.

Dennis just killed another one a couple of minutes ago.

Of course, all of the ads look the same. It's probably the work of one idiot with too much time on his hands.
 
I delete 5-6 new accounts from my little forum every day. It gets extremely annoying. I can see that Fauna or another large site would be a good target for them due to the number of people who might see their post before it gets deleted, but my forum is so small I can't believe they waste their time. There are threads on this site that are bigger than my entire forum haha.

One thing to mention to Mike. You said you just started using Spam Assassin. I've been using it for 4 years or however long I've been hosted with Rich. It is very effective. I even tweaked the settings a little to make it more strict.
One thing to watch though, if you have it set to send the spam to a spam folder like I did. You can only access that folder through cpanel, and if ignored for too long it will use up the space for the whole email account and your regular email will start bouncing.
I've had this happen a couple of times. Initially I had it set to send spam to the folder just so I could make sure it wasn't catching something it shouldn't.
I have since set it to just delete everything it detects as spam so I never see it.
 
Clay,
After the first day, I set the threshold down to 4 to be very aggressive.
I also have the Spam Box enabled so that I can monitor it for the time being.
I check it a couple of times a day just to be safe.

Thanks,
 
WebSlave said:
Mike, just out of curiosity, how would you figure the "relaxed ruleset" having a bearing on the wave of spammers? I could see that being the case if the majority of them were being posted in the BOI, but for all intents and purposes, NOTHING has changed elsewhere that would have inhibited spammers from doing then what they are doing now.

Just curious if I am missing something important........ :)
Click to expand...
The only thing that has changed is the report post icon is gone, so things might not get noticed as quickly in the forums
 
I've also noticed people postings so many ads in a section that everyone elses ads get pushed to the bottom. All they need to do is summarize what they have available in one or two ads instead of posting 5 or more. Although these ads are the right type for the board, it does get quite annoying to have the entire top half of the front page taken up by ads of a single person.

Maybe a daily limit would help? Or am I just crazy?:p
 
Sunset Gecko said:
I've also noticed people postings so many ads in a section that everyone elses ads get pushed to the bottom. All they need to do is summarize what they have available in one or two ads instead of posting 5 or more. Although these ads are the right type for the board, it does get quite annoying to have the entire top half of the front page taken up by ads of a single person.

Maybe a daily limit would help? Or am I just crazy?:p
Click to expand...

Not much I can do about this without custom programming, which I really can't see spending the money on for a *free* classifieds section. And I certainly have no intention of burning up my time trying to enforce such a rule.

However, one consolation is that paid members can utilize the newly resurrected Classifieds Control Panel in order to highlight their ads, and bump them to the top of the section if they want to.

So there is an option available to you to try to make your ads a bit more noticeable here.
 
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