Blocking email replies to a campaign's forums - SPAM problem

Dreadnought
Dreadnought
edited December 2015 in Campaign Submissions
I'm hoping somebody might be able to help.

A number of spam messages have appeared on the forums for two of my games, all coming from the same account - which is a valid account for one of my players. He still has control of the account - he's using it himself - so it hasn't been 'stolen' from him. I had him change the password. He's not posting the spam but it's still appearing.

I am assuming messages are being sent to the forum via e-mail. Is there any mechanism by which I can block the ability to reply to those forums via email? If there isn't, it'd be a nice feature for the future.

Comments

  • andreww38
    andreww38
    Posts: 239
    @Dreadnought - could you or the player in your group forward the spam email to me at [email protected]

    It'd be important to include the complete email, including the header information, so we can trace how the spam email is being sent.

    Thanks.
  • Dreadnought
    Dreadnought
    Posts: 12
    I will forward you the email I received from OP after the post appeared on the forum.

    I'm not sure this header information is helpful as it comes from an e-mail sent to us AFTER the post appears on the OP game forum - and the issue is how the post gets to the OP game forum in the first place and I'm not sure that information is being retained by the email I'm sending you. The person whose account it appears under is not posting the message, making me believe it's getting there as a spoof email imitating their account.

    Thanks.
  • GamingMegaverse
    GamingMegaverse
    Posts: 2,998
    So, trying to understand the system at Kaleidoscope. Someone happens to post on a community forum on a day that, for the first time in 4 months (yes, it has been 4 months since Andrew Wee was here) a member of Kaleidoscope happens to be here, and it is "I will fix it."
    Meanwhile we have hundreds of tickets, some years old, that are still a problem. Just trying to understand what the process is.
    If I need to take every ticket and post them here on the community forum, just let me know...

    Just trying to help out.

  • andreww38
    andreww38
    Posts: 239 edited December 2015
    @killervp - I am going through the help site, forums and various other channels to identify and address the outstanding issues, and as you've pointed out, there're probably hundreds of them, with some dating to 2011.

    If there're ones that need to be addressed now, you can PM or email me direct at [email protected] , or reposting on the forums. I will look at everything that's posted or comes my way.

    I'll do my best to come up with a solution/answer, other than "we'll look into it".
    Post edited by andreww38 on
  • Leonidas300
    Leonidas300
    Posts: 273 edited December 2015
    "@killervp - I am going through the help site, forums and various other channels to identify and address the outstanding issues, and as you've pointed out, there're probably hundreds of them, with some dating to 2011".

    Andrew

    In the almost year since you all have taken over shouldn't you already have a list of the long outstanding issues? Since Jacksh#t has been done about them, it is not likely the issues resolved themselves.

    What is your internal process for "fixing" things? How do you triage what is to be fixed? Do you have a schedule of what it is you are working on? and if not why? if so, please post it. Why is it that almost a year after you all have taken over the site is in worse shape? What are the other Inner Council members up to? What do you have to say to the Ascendant Members who have been paying for a sub-standard product (especially for the last 4 months or so)? Why should anyone currently feel that the work they do on their campaigns will be safe?

    Lastly, in your own words please tell me why I should come back as an Ascendant Member?

    Leonidas300
    Post edited by Leonidas300 on
  • Keryth987
    Keryth987
    Posts: 1,047
    I can answer your last question Leonidas. For the Community and for your campaign sites. After all the time and effort you put into your magnificent work, do you truly want to just abandon it?

    Keelah Se'lai,
    Keryth
    "Shadows Over New York":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shadows-over-new-york
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    "Campaign of the Month July 2013":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/shadows-over-new-york-julys-campaign-of-the-month/

  • Dreadnought
    Dreadnought
    Posts: 12

    I'm not sure if things have been reorganised so this is now in the wrong forum, but rather than opening a new thread, I want to say that this is still happening. Two of my campaign forums are still being spammed - 13 spam messages today. Is this happening to anybody else? Maybe if OP could find other examples, they could work out what is happening so they could fix this - because I have had enough interactions with support that I do believe they are trying to.



    I'm at risk of losing my players. They are sick of being spammed and I don't blame them. They've already stopped reading the forums which I was trying to use to organise things between sessions rendering that particular part of OP pretty useless to me. I'm paying my membership month by month largely because this issue is still there and each month I wonder if I should just give up on OP all together. I don't want to because I've put quite a lot of work into the portals for some of my campaigns and I don't want to lose it, and because when it is working properly, I really like what OP is doing. But this spam issue is really getting to me.



    An e-mail address that is not associated with a member of a campaign should not be able to send e-mails to the forums for that campaign. I'm not happy with the fact that we have no choice but to allow any e-mails to send messages to the forums (as a option, fine, but as a default I don't like it) but an e-mail that isn't even associated with a current member of a campaign makes e-mail spoofing spam very difficult to deal with.

  • cgregory
    cgregory
    Posts: 780

    Not happening to me. But a couple questions, do the spams always go to the same two forum topics? Have you tried deleting the forum topics that have been spammed?  Looking at the email replies, it looks like in order to spam you they would need the random string email address associated with one of the previous forum messages sent out under a specific topic. 

    I just tested out deleting a forum topic, once it is deleted no new email replies get posted. If it is just spaming in one forum topic delete that forum topic and you should be good. if it is in multiple forum topics, delete all topics with with spam. You could just delete all forum topics. No forum topics would mean no spam can be created. In order to delete a forum topic click the edit button next to the title of the forum topic.

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  • OPSupport
    OPSupport
    Posts: 93

    As mentioned in the support channel, the team has a fix for this issue prepared and it will be made available on the next release. It will ensure that if a user does not have an active account, that they cannot post to the campaign forums. Apparently that was not the case with the code base before. The mechanism which processes the email post backs then posts to the forum is the culprit from the team can tell. 

    We appreciate the urgency for your players. Unfortunately, the team has been stymied however trying to get this fix out the door for various non-technical reasons. Please understand this is a top priority which is being tracked, and that everything that can be done is being done to get the fix out as soon as possible. Thank you. 

  • twiggyleaf
    twiggyleaf
    Posts: 2,006

    smiley

    "I met a traveller from an antique land....."

    CotM May 2016: Mysteria: set in Wolfgang Baur’s MIDGARD.

    Previous CotM Aug 2012: Shimring: High Level Multiplanar Campaign

    Inner Council Member

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