What is NinjaTrader Doing About Spammers?

[aligator]

An old issue. Can NinjaTrader explain why it can't control weekend and nightly spammers from posting in the forum (General Development sections)?. How safe is members' information if spammers can't be kept out?

[NinjaTrader_Manfred]

Hello aligator,

Thank you very much for your post.

While our Platform Support Team does not have 24-hour coverage on weekends, spam will be removed whenever possible and when a forum moderator is available.

As the forum is freely accessible and does not limit registrations, we would have to also limit posting rights for legitimate members to completely stop spam from occurring, which is not something we are willing to do as we wish to keep the entry requirements low, allowing everyone to participate.

Being able to create a forum account has no influence over your personal information. Someone posting spam would not have access to more information than you have access to regarding other members, and we are not aware of any personal information ever having been accessed.

Please don't hesitate to let me know, should you have any further questions in this regard.

[aligator]

Hello aligator,

Thank you very much for your post.

While our Platform Support Team does not have 24-hour coverage on weekends, spam will be removed whenever possible and when a forum moderator is available.

As the forum is freely accessible and does not limit registrations, we would have to also limit posting rights for legitimate members to completely stop spam from occurring, which is not something we are willing to do as we wish to keep the entry requirements low, allowing everyone to participate.

Being able to create a forum account has no influence over your personal information. Someone posting spam would not have access to more information than you have access to regarding other members, and we are not aware of any personal information ever having been accessed.

Please don't hesitate to let me know, should you have any further questions in this regard.

Certainly there are standard industry ways (verification codes, IPA, etc.) for NinjaTrader, without impacting legitimate members' posting rights, to indentify and ban repeating spammers to keep them from opening new accounts.

[jeronymite]

Some basic real-time filtering of posts could easily stop a large proportion of spam currently being seen. For example, anything with any of the following in the title of the post (case-insensitive literal anywhere within the title) should be rejected: CBD, gummy, gummies, ****, oprah, ... ... and I'm sure a quick analysis of previous spam could identify more. This would not impinge on the ability of legitimate members to post as desired, since such text filtering should be perfectly acceptable to all members.

The issue is not solely about potential access to members' information. It is a matter of principle (spam is a menace in any way it is propagated), a matter of annoyance (members should not have to wade through lists of spam posts to find legitimate posts), and a matter of corporate responsibility (businesses should implement reasonable mechanisms to prevent disruptive behaviours for members, and to try to reduce any incentive for disruptors to continue to disrupt). If spammers can post with impunity, even if there is "delayed action", there is no reason for them to change their obnoxious behaviour. Although there may be no material risk to members' information in this particular forum, allowing spammers to post at all encourages activities that, in other circumstances unrelated to this forum, may be far more pernicious. Rather like bullying, stop it early to prevent it becoming something more serious as the bully learns it is possible to bully in some places without material consequence.

Thanks.

[aligator]

Hi NinjaTrader_Ray

Just FYI. Spammers seems to have a free hand here and no preventive actions are taken by NinjaTrader. At this time, the Support simply deletes spams when noticed. Perhaps a Futures.IO model could be used here, banning and filtering the IP address, etc. to keep spammers away. Here are a few recent examples:

Thanks.

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello everyone,

It can be tricky to be able to filter these and provide appropriate action in an automated way, without unintended consequences, etc.

Thanks for the suggestions, we are investigating ways to make this experience better for everyone.

[aligator]

Hello everyone,

It can be tricky to be able to filter these and provide appropriate action in an automated way, without unintended consequences, etc.

Thanks for the suggestions, we are investigating ways to make this experience better for everyone.

Hi NinjaTrader_Jim ,

Where there is a will there is a solution. The NT Support would normally delete a spam if they one posted (there are some new ones today and still there). How about just banning the IP address of the sender at the same time. This does not need automation and does not create unintended consequences, other than preventing the spammer to create another NT account and continue to post spams.

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Thanks alligator,

My last message was to acknowledge your tip, it is something we are exploring.

[shawnbrown]

Some basic real-time filtering of posts could easily stop a large proportion of spam currently being seen. For example, anything with any of the following in the title of the post (case-insensitive literal anywhere within the title) should be rejected: CBD, gummy, gummies, ****, oprah, ... ... and I'm sure a quick analysis of previous spam could identify more. This would not impinge on the ability of legitimate members to post as desired, since such text filtering should be perfectly acceptable to all members.

The issue is not solely about potential access to members' information. It is a matter of principle (spam is a menace in any way sky it is propagated), a matter of annoyance (members should not have to wade through lists of spam posts to find legitimate posts), and a matter of corporate responsibility (businesses should implement reasonable mechanisms to prevent disruptive behaviours for members, and to try to reduce any incentive for disruptors to continue to disrupt). If spammers can post with impunity, even if there is "delayed action", there is no reason for them to change their obnoxious behaviour. Although there may be no material risk to members' information in this particular forum, allowing spammers to post at all encourages activities that, in other circumstances unrelated to this forum, may be far more pernicious. Rather like bullying, stop it early to prevent it becoming something more serious as the bully learns it is possible to bully in some places without material consequence.

Thanks.

Or may be NinjaTrader should increase their moderators to stop the spam, I know it hard but will definitely the spam will be reduced.

[Jim W.]

Don't wait to NT. Filter the Forum spam yourself, then you will never see 99% of the spam from NT Forums. I use Gmail and Microsoft Office for my email. To eliminate 99+% of the NT Forum spam, I created two Outlook Email rules:

Rule 1) Apply this rule after the message arrives
with 'cbd qummies' or '**** qummies' in the subject Note: Forum changed four letters k - e - t - o to ***
move it to the Deleted Items folder
and stop processing more rules

Rule 2) Apply this rule after the message arrives
with 'cbd qummies' or '**** qummies' in the body
move it to the Deleted Items folder
and stop processing more rules

It is easy to create and update rules if the spammers change their spam.

Similar Gmail Filters can be set at https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/filters .

If you don't use Outlook or Gmail then your email client will have junk filters. See their Help.

[aligator]

Don't wait to NT. Filter the Forum spam yourself, then you will never see 99% of the spam from NT Forums. I use Gmail and Microsoft Office for my email. To eliminate 99+% of the NT Forum spam, I created two Outlook Email rules:

If you don't use Outlook or Gmail then your email client will have junk filters. See their Help.

Are you talking about personal (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) e-mail spams sent to your mail inbox or about spams posted on NinjaTrader Forum? The latter is the topic here, and can not be filtered by forum members.

[Jim W.]

Are you talking about personal (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) e-mail spams sent to your mail inbox or about spams posted on NinjaTrader Forum? The latter is the topic here, and can not be filtered by forum members.

I specifically referred to spam emails in my post. When subscribed, I filter out annoying Forum generated emails about spam like:

NinjaTrader Support Forum	Thu, Sep 8, 2:53 AM (1 day ago)		Reply
to xxx

Dear Jim W.,

gretaany has made a new post under
The Ultimate Secret Of VIA **** GUMMIES AUSTRALIA

The discussion is located at:

xxx

I was able to pull up this example because I only filter with Outlook. My Gmail is unfiltered so I can retrieve everything that I receive.