Solution for all the spam messages here

[mariokluser]

Just block entire regions. Whether for the entire website or only for the forum.
The latter would also elevate the quality of the forum posts. I know I’m not political correct, but so be it.

I run several website’s and blocked access for entire countries with the result that spam comments etc. stopped for 99,9%

[umerkhayam128]

Or in the time of this huge spam, make honorary forum admins including TRS and level 2 sellers to just get done with the spamming stuff ( I am assuming forum admins can delete posts and threads).

[mariokluser]

Yes, but the message at the forum states “The forum moderators cannot manage this quantity by manual removal but will work with Fiverr in any way we can to fix this.”

[bizzytip]

does not seem sa if fiverr is controlling that in anyway; a lot of other crtical functions on the normal site are also messed up, I really don’t trust the plattform right now …

[mariokluser]

Can’t confirm the thing with the functions right now, but they really should take immediate action.

German was not a translation of the wording above, and in fact appeared to be another to insult a particular group.

[djgodknows]

@mariokluser
Blocking regions would not be a functional solution since the posters are using ip from almost all the continents.

[umerkhayam128]

Yes, it does. But that i assume partly must be because of number of admins, let’s say they make around 10 honorary admins or voluntary admins, we can cope with it.

[mariokluser]

Yes, they use proxies, Blocking those regions would not only help to get rid of a portion of them, but would also lower Fiverr’s overhead costs, as from most of the regions that shall not be named comes little to none revenue anyway.

[emmaki]

Ignoring the Fiverr 20% that comes anyway, I think this is unfair to good sellers (and buyers) from those countries. I wish the spammers and scammers would just all be sucked into a black hole. They ruin it for everyone!

That said, someone else (I forget who!) posted that they had reported Google for abuse of AdSense, so this venture may turn out to be less profitable than hoped.

[misscrystal]

There might be no good sellers or buyers from certain regions or countries.

[umerkhayam128]

A more rational approach would be to make signing up process a bit toughened, maybe some interview, questionnaires stuff.

[kylebuser]

We are trying to find resources to address the spam and other issues on the forum. Due to production issues on fiverr.com, resulting from instability at our ISP, we have been spread pretty thin lately. We haven’t forgotten about you guys, and I apologize for such a poor user experience on our forums at this time.

[djgodknows]

The issue is currently only effecting the forums. And it is a low priority for the dev team, since this portion of fiver is not an income generating entity.

No need to utilize highly skilled workers’ labor hours at a revenue free z0ne.

Honestly, I am no longer bothered by them as it seems like an interesting fishing game to find threads to post to.

[djgodknows]

Taking care of the main site is and should be the number 1 priority. I as a techie understand the need for proper task delegation at the highest priority location.

So no worries and thanks for giving us an update!

[Anna]

Thank you for the update and for addressing the issues Kyle.

[orcatek]

Captcha is what I would like to see. Very effective.

[misscrystal]

No thanks on that idea.

Spam can be blocked on forums without that kind of pain in the neck measure.

[mgjohn78]

When you block a region you pay for it in damage to your brand name.

[fonthaunt]

Actually, in this case, it is not an issue of more mods or we would have already taken up offers of volunteers. @mariokluser is correct that it was specified that way on purpose. At first, manual removal was not functioning correctly so no quantity of volunteers would have been able to help. It had to be deleted by paid developers.

The second reason the numbers don’t currently help is that this is a different type of issue from even the last time we had a large spam assault. I cannot say more about it because the spammers themselves could get information from it, but all I can say is that manual removal is not currently very helpful. The spam would be re-added in minutes if we did remove it. The moderators are still working with staff in any way we can to aid their efforts and that is all that can be done right now.

[mgjohn78]

Dynamic questions on signup and variables stored outside the script and db (so that bots cant scan for them). That + proxy blocking from various sources usually takes care of the automated spam. For manual human spam and trolling i find the most effective method is an ignore method tied to identifying variables. I adapted this idea from a phpbb troll mod that existed back in the day but never got too much attention. The way my scripts works is the spammer or troll just keeps on spamming or trolling but nobody ever pays any attention nor clicks on links etc. This is because the spammers posts are only visible to the spammer or troll while to the rest of the community they dont exist.

[fonthaunt]

The forum is entirely separate in almost every way. Although I do agree that there are some feature issues on Fiverr.com, what you are seeing on the forum does mean that Fiverr.com in insecure at this time.

As far as the forum itself, the spam and functionality issues are an understandable reason for real concern IF you were to click the links in the spam. As a forum of the forum team I can promise you that we are also concerned and frustrated, but are aware that staff is taking it seriously.

I would tell you if I thought that it was dangerous to use Fiverr itself because I would be in the same position as a seller. If you are exceptionally worried, you could stop making financial transactions on the site until things are resolved and to me, that’s fair enough since it’s your business. 🙂

[Guest silkroute]

Yeah, right. Are you trying to get me buried here!

For what it’s worth, the current spam onslaught has not been posted manually by spammers. It uses an automated script which creates bots which post messages, comments on forums, wordpress blogs, youtube and so on. So it’s not ‘many people’, it’s likely less than a dozen people who may have gotten their hands on some bot script from somewhere.

There are other issues with the core Fiverr service as well. For example, first time buyers are being shown as repeat buyers, but when I click on their profile, there are no past orders. The green dot signalling that I am online never turns green whenever I am, well, online. I have to press the message/dashboard/notification icons to ‘wake up’ the system to let it know that I am online, it is then that the green dot appears.

If you want to shadow ban the country from where the attack has been initiated, be careful what you wish for, because tomorrow one might realize that it was one of Fiverr’s competitors from Silicon Valley who are behind it, in that case, well…

[mariokluser]

Paypal stopped in certain regions and it didn’t damage their brand name. I see what you mean, but imo everything comes with a little collateral damage.

[mariokluser]

Absolutely agree on that.

[fonthaunt]

I love positive thinking! 🙂 The spam is sure irritating me, but I like your plan.