US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

A little while ago, a spammer (using the name ColeWood155) hit this site and posted the following message all over the forum:

nanaopanihuyapam700{url}http://google.com{/url}

The original message used square brackets in place of the curly brackets which created links to google.com. I've gone through this site and moved all those posts to the "Forum Spam?" area.

The question is, why would anyone do that? I could understand directing people to "buy viagra" web sites, but why send people to google.com? I doubt that Google would need to spam the US Hawks to increase their traffic. So what would anyone else have to gain?

Then I began reading up on at term called "SEO" which stands for "Search Engine Optimization". It turns out that there's a virtual war going on between spammers and the search engines. The spammers are trying (by hook or by crook) to drive people to their sites using all kinds of "tricks" on the search engines. The search engines are fighting back by giving low rankings to any sites that play those "tricks".

The biggest search engine is currently Google, so I'm wondering if those posts were designed to give us bad marks with respect to Google's search engine ranking. If anyone has any background on this please feel free to post what you know or send me a PM. I am new to this whole SEO thing, but I'll be learning as I go. Any help is welcome.

Thanks.

Suggest to administrators of US HAWKS web site (here)
delete all erronious or non-factual members from the membership rolls - While they may look innocent a silent "member" with access to the web site can affect the matrix -
all interested actual member should be freely willing to identify themselves-
Caution would be important when accepting ant "member" who lives in outer Mongolia or Kurdistan..?
Suggest a goat herder in Tibet may be located on a bitchin' launch site but the fact remains do we put the entire group at risk by accepting memberships from anyone with a PC ?
--- Caution Please ...
thanks

Thanks for the words of caution Neil.

But I don't think it was one of the automated lurking spammers. I think it was a real person with an axe to grind against the Hawks (and likely against me). A spammer doesn't gain anything by getting Google mad at the Hawks. That just causes Google to rate us lower in their listing of sites. A spammer who's posted here would rather have us raised in Google's listing rather than lowered.

I've also considered a more stringent sign up policy, but at this point we don't have enough people to keep the forum "lively" as it is. So I don't want to put up any additional barriers until we start getting more active participation here. In that regard, please invite everyone you know to sign up and post as often as they can. Please do so yourself as well. That will bring the site to life and make it viable.

Thanks.

FromDayOne wrote:all interested actual member should be freely willing to identify themselves-

Yes, I agree. So you should be willing to post your name.

Respectfully,
Sam Kellner
SW Texas Hang Gliders

Hi Sam and Neil,

I've been addressing the forum spam problem using the various Group and Permissions settings of this forum. In the past, anyone who could get past the initial registration filter (reading that crazy text) became a "Registered User" and was free to post anywhere on the forum. But I've just restricted the "Registered User" group to only posting in the "New Users Forum". That way, any spam bots that get past the registration can only spam that one forum. Similarly, any new users who want to post can only post to that one forum until I add them to an approved users group. At that time, I'll manually move any of their posts from the New Users Forum to the location that they've requested when making their post.

This is a compromise which allows anyone to register and post immediately (in a limited "sandbox") without any human approval. At the same time it protects the rest of the forum from automated spam bots. We'll see how well it works...

I'm still very new to managing a forum, so I hope this is acceptable. If you have any trouble posting or need any help, please call me directly at 858-204-7499 and I'll try to fix whatever I've broken.

Bob K.

a silent "member" with access to the web site can affect the matrix -

I worried about this when Bob brought me on board. There is no room for poor sportsmanship.. maybe we can think of some ways to advertise in the manual a courtesy rule and the consequences that goes along with the diliberate breaking of those rules. I wish we didn't have to and we shouldn't, but this is unacceptable!

One of the things that generally keeps people from being too obnoxious is knowing that other people know who they really are. That's the problem with allowing anonymous postings - the feedback mechanism is broken. So I've decided that anonymous postings will only be allowed in certain areas of the forum. That gives anonymous people a place to speak their mind while not allowing them to over-run the forum with spam. I think that's a nice compromise, but we can always change it if there's a problem.

So there's even a place for "poor sportsmanship" ... but it's a somewhat limited place.

Well, at the current time, our site shows:

Total posts 1112 • Total topics 415 • Total members 660 • Our newest member Jackyxjha

Many of those 660 members are automatically generated spammers. I'm guessing that most of them haven't posted anywhere because new users can't post to most parts of the forum (they're limited to the New Users forum and the Spam forum). So that's been keeping the rest of the forum pretty clean.

But having 660 members with many of them being fake is not what I intended for this web site, so I'm going to have to look into better software to control these automated posters. I'm currently using an "off the shelf" Captcha module to provide the registration filter (the letters and numbers that you have to type in to register). Since these are "off the shelf", that means they're also used by many other forums, and so I'm sure there's been an effort to "crack" these codes and develop software that can read them automatically. It's like a war between the spammers and the site operators. As soon as the site operators develop a new level of protection, the spammers get to work on cracking it.

I believe, however, that it takes far more effort to write the software to crack a filter than it does to write the filter in the first place. So that means the site operators should have an advantage. The problem is that all the site operators tend to use the same filters, so if the spammers crack that one filter, then that opens all the sites. There are certainly bigger sites than USHawks, and that effort is worth their time for those bigger sites. And because USHawks uses the same filter, then we get cracked essentially for free.

So at this time, I'm thinking we'd be better off coming up with our own registration filter. It doesn't have to be very high tech, but it just has to be different from what others are using. In that case, I doubt anyone will spend the time to try to break it since that would only get them into this tiny little site ... not worth the effort.

So, with that thought in mind, I'm going to set out to build my own registration filter. I don't mind doing it on my own. It will be a "fun" project for me, and it will help me get better at PHP programming. By the same token, if there are any members of the forum who would like to help me or give me some guidance, that would be welcome as well. Please send me a PM if you're interested in the project, and we can discuss it.

Thanks to everyone who uses the forum. We're struggling, but not giving up!!!

Bob Kuczewski

Of course this site is under attack. From the very begining..
But I'm talking a different language than ones and zeros.
I don't really get that stuff and it doesn't matter in this plug and play world, does it?
Don't know how much time you'll be spending to crank out a custom filtering program. Hope it isn't too much work but as you say, an engineer's mind may get some enjoyment out of the process.

The whole "free" internet is under attack and always has been as a DARPA invention built up to enslave us.

Conspiracy, you say?

Nope. Everyone should know that.
Google is an entity of the NSA. Total snoopage.. the monsanto of the interwebs.. do no evil? ya.. right..

"Echelon" was a wild and crazy conspiracy theory when I railed about it years ago.
Why don't people call me "conspiracy nut" today like they did when I first started exposing these things?

Denial and hiding from the truth are easier than confronting truths we don't want to address.
But that is a losing strategy. To not resist an encroaching tyranny is to insure it's enactment.
Anyone with eyes to see knows where we are heading..

Globalism, neo-fuedal corporatism, fascism.. the new world order.. the "conspiracy" is being played out
in front of our eyes. Call it what you want, it's a power play to control the world.

An internet power play for all the marbles is in action. It's all about control and censorship.
The yellow journalist loves it. It's what his little bloggosphere is modeled on. "They" are shutting down free speech
in the name of fighting cyber terrorism that "they" themselves create under false flag attack.

IT guys should all know this but I understand that 'you all' have a whole other way of processing information than someone like me. I am the conspiracy guy.

Conspiracies are all around us. Those with too much education (conditioning) deny that which the "experts" deny.
Modern education makes robots. Davis referred to it recently but from a different angle. The piece he copies refers to it in a cartoonish video (like Bill Gates recently on third world vaccinations to 'control' the population) but the cartoon video didn't actually cover the solution that I'm sure is lurking in the wings for the next level of educational 'change' in the works.

Anyway, off track, but it's all connected.. yes, the web site is under attack. We are all under attack.
Internet two is in the chute. Brainwash control, censorship and electronic enslavement is the plan.

Sexual abuse of your wives and children at the airport is now encroaching even at the State sanctioned Religion of Superbowl. Walmart enslavement centers broadcast messages from big brother to spy on your neighbor.. that protesting granny may be a terrorist.. orifice searches soon to follow..

Mark of the beast to get your soylent green monsanto burgers.. it is 1984.. it is Brave New World, but worse with the technology.

It is not a conspiracy. I am not a conspiracy nut.
We are under attack.. what is not to understand?

Solutions?

Resistance is victory.
It is a spiritual battle we face.
Unity is key.

People, don't believe that you will not be affected by the course of this globalist agenda.
It is not a 'left or right' equation. We are all under attack. Your food and water.. the air you breath, a hundred vaccinations for your kids.. the shadow government, the military pharma industrial complex has your family
in it's sights.

We are being robbed and pillaged while we are slowly being poisoned to death.
Franken foods are destroying our ecology. Honey bees and humans killed by and by..

Enough..

Who will be brave enough to attack this rant as (you fill in the blank)? Plenty to choose from..

It's called communication. It's very hard.
Warren

Free wrote:Of course this site is under attack. From the very begining..

Unfortunately, I still haven't had time to look into better filtering. So for now, I've enabled Administrator Approval for all new members. That means more work for me, and it means that new users can't post right away. But the rising number of bogus members is getting to the point where I had to do something before it became exponential. So that's my stop-gap solution until I can update the software.

At this time here are the current statistics:

Total posts 1369 • Total topics 576 • Total members 962 • Our newest member Tynclymnmog

Those numbers would look impressive, but the majority of those "members" are automated bots. The new approval system should cut that down quite a bit.