Spam on the rise, film at 11

Post by **NeoThermic** » Fri, 18 2006 Aug 23:04:56

If you're using my forums, I'm watching you

I've been logging for over a year now on things like spam registration attempts and spam posts that I've blocked. I decided to take the logs and put them into a graph, to see any trends.

Side note: All images are thumbnails, click for larger

First, spam registrations:

As you can see, it has rocketed. Spam registrations in April 2006 peaked at 315. August 2006 isn't yet over (data runs up to the 15th), but that is already at 171 attempts.

Secondly, spam posts:

Well. I think the graph speaks for itself. This month's data is up til the 18th, and it is at 470 already.

If anyone knows how to get Excel to actually put month names, do post here, It's been annoying me all day!

smithy_dll · Post by **smithy_dll** » Sat, 19 2006 Aug 01:39:49

Wow, starting April 2006 it looks like it will be an exponential growth for the number of posts.

The scary part is the bandwidth all this SPAM will consume.

This is definetly a case of the spammers being one step ahead of the general informed public, and it's leeching into every and any web form on the internet they can possibly squeese their URIs into.

What is needed is a couple of organised effort for the provention of spamming any and every web form. The key word being organised. A single effort is not suitable as it creates a single profile spammers can break easier.

who_cares · Post by **who_cares** » Sat, 19 2006 Aug 02:24:38

looks like they're trying to guest post

Post by **NeoThermic** » Sat, 19 2006 Aug 02:27:24

who_cares wrote:looks like they're trying to guest post

For the posts, yes. Registrations obviously not

I allow guest posting (with a captcha) to allow everyone to comment on my blog

NeoThermic

profpete · Post by **profpete** » Sat, 19 2006 Aug 13:56:36

Ref the excel question, on Step 2 of 4 in the Wizard, on the Series tab, set Category (X) axis labels to the range for where the month names are stored, e.g. =Sheet1!$A$1:$A$12 - they can actually be anywhere, it doesn't matter as long as they are in order.

That said, if you're using X-Y Scatter, then you don't get that option - you should really be using Line Graph for this. If you want the smoothed lines, just double-click on each line once the chart is made, and click Smooth lines

Post by **NeoThermic** » Sat, 19 2006 Aug 15:12:37

profpete wrote:That said, if you're using X-Y Scatter, then you don't get that option - you should really be using Line Graph for this. If you want the smoothed lines, just double-click on each line once the chart is made, and click Smooth lines

Yeah, I worked out early this morning that X-Y Scatter was the problem, but I didn't know that line graph could have smooth lines, so I'll hopefully update them

Thanks

NeoThermic