Spam

In order to add a hot link or post a photo a member must have made 5 posts then wait 24 hours.
Spammers generally tack nonsense messages on the end of old threads.
Long time members see these then use the little triangle on the lower left to send an alert message to the moderators.
Thus the forum becomes self filtering.
There has been a lot of potential spammers but as they have to make 5 posts then wait 24 hours we pick them up & the moderators toss the people off.
Some times they edit out the suspect posts, some times they don't .
Because there are members in every time zone potential spammer get picked up almost as soon as they are posted.
Much the same as with hackers and Linux, no mal wear lasts more than a few hours before detection then generally a patch is available in.

So you have seen them
"good post"
"Very informative"
Or a random text string pulled off the web.

SidecarFlip said:

In as much as I only come here for entertainment mostly, I've never seen a spammer. I have seen awful spelling though. This has to be by far, the worst forum for spelling I'm on. Guess no one uses IE Spell on here....lol

Click to expand...

So here you go Flip.
The second post in the following thread is a spammer
In this case he wants us to go to the web site .
There are several thousand members on this forum so if 1/2 of them are inquisitive enough to follow that link, it will raise it's position in search engines.
Either Ron is trying to sell his essay writing service or who ever owns the essay writing service has paid him to raise it's profile., if the address is actually an essay service & not a distribution site for malwear.


https://www.lawnmowerforum.com/showthread.php/51203-JD-L120-Briggs-and-Stratton-engine-repair-governor

Bert:

My Trend Microservice AV running on the front end will not allow me to open any link it feels isn't kosher anyway. I can click on a link and it will not let me access it. Fine with me. Saves me any issue with a malicious site. Trend isn't cheap but works well.

I have problems with all of these security programmes.
They tend to make you lazy because " the computer will not allow any bad things to happen"
The problem with all of them is they rely on the nasty problem to be identified first by which time it can be too late.
I have 16 email accounts each one gets used for a specific reason .
Every day more spam appears, much of it apparently sent from addresses of people or groups I know, because URL spoofing is getting very sophisticated.
Spam, virus , ransom wear and other such items need to be identified first and some times this can take a week or more by which time it can be too late.
Professional cyber criminals buy every "protection" pack available then pull it apart looking for ways to circumvent it and generally they are successful if only for a short time.
SO don't sit there thinking you are protected & can flaunt around the web with immunity or not keep back ups on devices that are not connected to your computer 24/7.

There are 5 old computers in my LAN but only 2 are connected to the internet . One is the web server with all of my web pages on it, the other is my browser & email server.
Each of the computers except the internet connected ones run a RAID array with a 3 , 4, 5 or 6 way mirror but only 2 of the mirror discs are ever connected at any one time so no matter what happens there is always multiple back up discs.
Sounds complicated but they run through an old 36 port switch so it is just a matter of plugging in & pulling out the ethernet plugs then allowing the computer to update the old out of sync mirror to be the same as the current hard drives.

Mine runs totally in the background. The only time I get any notifications is when the site has a malicious content and then Trend won't allow me to access it unless I override the caution. I also have dark web security scan 2 times a month to track any intrusions. Unlike Morton Trend don't slow down the computer at all and I have the latest and greatest Dell with a chipset hard drive. It's insanely quick. My Cousin is a Dell commercial Dell dealer, I had him set up this computer and I run on his commercial license so I have full programmers software installed as well.

Don't use half the stuff on this machine.