How to report spam?

[I_Luv_To_Travel]

Over the last few years TripAdvisor had a huge problem with spam. I knew how to report it there but how do members report spam here on Cruise Critic?I hope it doesn't get to the epic proportions it was there.

[FollowingTheSun]

You have to open the message and then there is a blue triangle with an exclamation mark in it to the right of the header.

I have reported one of the recent messages but not sure if you have to report them all.

[Thrak]

I have already reported the massive spam attack in Chinese here on CC. Below is a sample of one of the posts that I have pasted into Google Translate. It obviously has nothing to do with cruising. The poster shows a join date of TODAY and already has 37 posts like this one.

==========================

The company specializing in the production of diploma, for graduation certificate, academic certification [100% can be verified] imitation diploma, undergraduate degree, master's degree, the Ministry of education degree certification, diploma, transcripts, diploma, diploma, The certificate of the embassy, ​​the embassy to prove that the embassy returned to the staff to prove that the students certification, the certificate of diploma, certificate of diploma, diploma diploma, diploma diploma, diploma certification, Accreditation, Diploma certification [entity company, trustworthy] for the "Britain, Canada, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, the United States" and other countries of the degree of real education certification, embassy certification. For the United States British Australia Canada degree, diploma,

[I_Luv_To_Travel]

Thanks....on TripAdvisor it was ridiculous, always around this time when the powers that be were most likely asleep. Sometimes it would get to 8 - 10 pages in length and it would spread over several forums. Unfortunately once they realised they had the upper hand it became a daily occurrence.

[Thrak]

Just took a quick look. Didn't see this stuff in the Disney or Celebrity forums but the Carnival forum is loaded with the same junk. Hopefully they will kill the user account and, with luck, they may be able to just automagically eliminate all posts associated with the account.

[Bill B]

Oh... LOL. I thought the commie geeks at The Great Firewall were playing with my ISP to try and disable my VPN (again). :p

[Bill B]

Should I write to the spammer asking how much a "verifiable diploma" stating I hold a Lifetime AIBP will cost? ;)

[Essiesmom]

Last week it was every night on the Ask a Cruise Question forum. I had bets with myself as to what time it would start. The mods said to just report the first thread. Sometimes there are several usernames. EM

[Astro Flyer]

Just took a quick look. Didn't see this stuff in the Disney or Celebrity forums but the Carnival forum is loaded with the same junk. Hopefully they will kill the user account and, with luck, they may be able to just automagically eliminate all posts associated with the account.

Thrak...do you or other techies know if there's a potential risk by opening these threads to report them? Being unsure about any risk, I didn't open any of those Asian language threads & even closed the Princess forum website until they were removed.

 

I never open emails from unknown senders in an effort to avoid malware on my computer or mobile devices. That may be an unnecessary step because I never open attachments or click on links unless I'm positive it's from someone I know.

 

Some may say I'm being paranoid however I prefer to be called cautious. ;)

[USN59-79]

Thrak...do you or other techies know if there's a potential risk by opening these threads to report them? Being unsure about any risk, I didn't open any of those Asian language threads & even closed the Princess forum website until they were removed.

 

I never open emails from unknown senders in an effort to avoid malware on my computer or mobile devices. That may be an unnecessary step because I never open attachments or click on links unless I'm positive it's from someone I know.

 

Some may say I'm being paranoid however I prefer to be called cautious. ;)

I think you are correct in being concerned about this Chinese spam. It showed up two days ago on the HAL portion, then yesterday on the Princess portion of CC. What concerns me most is that CC has no filters to detect something so obvious as this and depends upon us to report it. Think about it: A new poster, from China, writing in Chinese, subjects which have nothing to do with cruising, and posting a dozen separate posts in an hour or so. I am not a software expert, but it seems to me that if their software cannot automatically flag something like that that Cruise Critic may be a dangerous web site for me to frequent on a regular basis.

[Astro Flyer]

I think you are correct in being concerned about this Chinese spam. It showed up two days ago on the HAL portion, then yesterday on the Princess portion of CC. What concerns me most is that CC has no filters to detect something so obvious as this and depends upon us to report it. Think about it: A new poster, from China, writing in Chinese, subjects which have nothing to do with cruising, and posting a dozen separate posts in an hour or so. I am not a software expert, but it seems to me that if their software cannot automatically flag something like that that Cruise Critic may be a dangerous web site for me to frequent on a regular basis.

I share your concerns & don't think having a filter to prevent non-English posts (particularly such obviously inappropriate posts in Chinese) would be difficult to create to protect their many cruise forums. This is not a new problem which is becoming more routine because CC doesn't automatically prevent them.

They've created filters to automatically block certain words that may or may not be considered offensive & should be able to prevent these ever increasing Chinese ads. At best they're annoying; at worst they may put our security at risk if we go to these threads.

 

As I previously asked, not sure if we're possibly risking our security or if it's merely an annoyance to be reported & then ignored. :confused:

[sfaaa]

I have already reported the massive spam attack in Chinese here on CC. Below is a sample of one of the posts that I have pasted into Google Translate. It obviously has nothing to do with cruising. The poster shows a join date of TODAY and already has 37 posts like this one.

==========================

The company specializing in the production of diploma, for graduation certificate, academic certification [100% can be verified] imitation diploma, undergraduate degree, master's degree, the Ministry of education degree certification, diploma, transcripts, diploma, diploma, The certificate of the embassy, ​​the embassy to prove that the embassy returned to the staff to prove that the students certification, the certificate of diploma, certificate of diploma, diploma diploma, diploma diploma, diploma certification, Accreditation, Diploma certification [entity company, trustworthy] for the "Britain, Canada, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, the United States" and other countries of the degree of real education certification, embassy certification. For the United States British Australia Canada degree, diploma,

 

This is just lame. Nowhere in there mentioned they specialize in the production of counterfeit cruise doc and sea card to cheat your way onto a cruise ship.

[Thrak]

People have valid concerns about clicking on a link of that sort. That is one reason I posted here that I had already reported the posts so that others wouldn't feel they might need to do so. I took the calculated risk of opening one and reporting it. If I had totally blown up my computer with viruses I would have then fixed it myself. Last year my wife opened what she thought was a legitimate file sent to her in regard to her work as a grant writer. She ended up infected with Ransom Ware that encrypted all of her stuff. The options were:

 

1. Pay the thieves to decrypt her files

2. Burn it to the ground and rebuild from scratch

 

I chose option 2. Sure it's a pain to format the drive and then reinstall everything from the Operating System up but at least she ended up with a nice, clean install. When I moved my main computer from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro I backed up my files and then did the same thing. Wiped it and started over with a clean install. It's not something I like to do very often but at least I can do it.

 

I would ask that most folks here simply avoid opening garbage of the type that was posted for their own peace of mind and to save the hassle of having to deal with a virus and the possibility of losing all their files.

 

I also suggest that if you have a lot of photos and other items you really can't afford to lose you purchase an external hard drive and copy all that stuff to the external drive and then leave the drive OFF most of the time.

[Astro Flyer]

Thrak...thanks for sharing your expertise & for reporting the threads.

 

I'll follow your advice & continue to ignore them while hoping that CC creates a way to prevent such posts.

[Colo Cruiser]

Should I write to the spammer asking how much a "verifiable diploma" stating I hold a Lifetime AIBP will cost? ;)

 

 

Actually if you complete the course you are a Commodore. :rolleyes:

[Bill B]

Actually if you complete the course you are a Commodore. :rolleyes:

 

:') Let's get Tony his Master Mariner certificate for the Rowboat. :D

[Sea Hag]

I feel left out. I haven't seen any of that here.

[Shmoo here]

I feel left out. I haven't seen any of that here.

It seems either the mods or the system is getting to them quicker now.

[Aus Traveller]

I feel left out. I haven't seen any of that here.

You didn't miss anything worthwhile, although the dozen or so separate threads written in Chinese script that I saw, did look spectacular. :) There was no point in opening them so I don't know why the person went to the bother of posting them on a forum where hardly anyone would be able to read them.

[Sea Hag]

It seems either the mods or the system is getting to them quicker now.

 

If you haven't seen them or many of them, maybe it's the imezone? We're both Pacific.

[Sea Hag]

You didn't miss anything worthwhile, although the dozen or so separate threads written in Chinese script that I saw, did look spectacular. :) There was no point in opening them so I don't know why the person went to the bother of posting them on a forum where hardly anyone would be able to read them.

Must have been interesting to see. Nothing like untargeted marketing. :)

[Astro Flyer]

Must have been interesting to see. Nothing like untargeted marketing. :)

 

On the Cruise Critic app it defaults to "Trending" where all CC forums are listed & there are dozens of the Chinese ads currently slamming the Community Contests forums if you still want to see them. ;)

[Z'Loth]

I took the calculated risk of opening one and reporting it. If I had totally blown up my computer with viruses I would have then fixed it myself. Last year my wife opened what she thought was a legitimate file sent to her in regard to her work as a grant writer. She ended up infected with Ransom Ware that encrypted all of her stuff. The options were:

 

1. Pay the thieves to decrypt her files

2. Burn it to the ground and rebuild from scratch

 

I chose option 2.

 

This just emphasizes the importance of a full-image backup AND to make backups regularly. For the price of a very nice cruise, I built a FreeNAS server for the primary purpose purchase of having all the computers in the household perform automatic backups. Not just of critical files, but the full drive image. The file shares have a rollback feature as well. It is configured with RAID-Z2 so that two of the eight drives can fail without concern. And, those shares are regularly backed up to an external drive as well.

 

Yes, I also use it as a media server as well, including.....

 

I also suggest that if you have a lot of photos and other items you really can't afford to lose you purchase an external hard drive and copy all that stuff to the external drive and then leave the drive OFF most of the time.

 

+1 on your advice. One of the features of Dropbox, Onedrive, and Plex Media Server is the ability to upload the pictures automatically from your smart phone to the cloud-based storage system. I suggest making sure that you make sure the app is set for WiFi only.

[I_Luv_To_Travel]

There's several hours worth of spam on the Alaskan forum at the moment. I only look at the Princess Cruises and Alaska forums and it's been on both the last 2 days.