Teds Woodworking. Scam?

[homey]

Mods,

Sorry to trouble you.

Logging in this evening, the forum’s principal banner ad was for Ted’s Woodworking. Am I wrong or is this the much reported scam? Searching ‘Teds Woodworking Scam’ beings up some horror stories. I’d hate to think that any of our less aware members were caught.

I understand completely that these ads are not ‘chosen’ by the forum but are Google generated, but I thought you might like to know.

Brian

[ubeaut]

Sorry for the delayed response.

The Google ads on here are mostly targeted, ie: They are based on your search or browser history. Hence years ago we used to have the odd member complain about adult content showing in the ads, until I was able to ban all adult content. Benning woodwofrking content isn't feasible but have done a targeted ban for Teds however if affiliates pay for ads then they may be able to get round that ban. I will look into it in a bit more depth and see what can be done.

Admin advice is to have nothing whatsoever to do with Teds Woodworking plans or similar.

Ripoff, scam, plagiarizing are but a few words used to describe Ted's and a couple of others including a similar one for Sheds.

We ban or deny access to thousands of prospective members per year who try to signup on here to advertise. Most are affiliate advertisers. The Teds paid affiliates get a 75% commission on each sale generated by their link to Teds site. They are a blight on the internet and especially woodworking sites.

Below are our stats for spammers and around 90% of of the below are affiliates trying to make money off members.

Spam-O-Matic Statistics
276449 Spammers Denied Registration
1055 Spammers Permanently Banned
1103 Spammers submitted to StopForumSpam
1140 Spammers submitted to Akismet
13694 Spammy Posts Automatically Moderated

Hope this helps members to understand a little more of what may be seen in the Ads at the top of the forum.

Cheers - Neil

[old1955]

Thanks Neil, both yourself and your colleagues must spend an awful amount of time keeping these grubs at bay.

[ubeaut]

Thanks Neil, both yourself and your colleagues must spend an awful amount of time keeping these grubs at bay.

Thanks, but there's only a very of us left on the forums who have any idea just how much time and effort went into keeping the forums up and running and clean of spammers. The following is a bit of a story about what it has taken.

In November 2011 hackers broke the human verification programs that been keeping these forums and many thousands of others around the world safe.

We had been sailing along averaging around 10 - 20+ members signing up each day with the odd one being a spammer or trouble maker of some sort. However on the 24th Nov we had 80 sign up in 24 hrs and more the next day. This went on until for a number of weeks where we were in a pitched battle with hundreds and hundreds of lowlife spammers and scammers the worst day was 187 signed in.

What has happened is that they had put a crack in the human verification programs like Capcha and this allowed around 0.05% of people signing up with bad intentions to get through. Half of a percent doesn't sound like much but when there are hundreds/thousands of robots generating signups at the rate of a million or more per hour that 0.05% amounted to a lot.

Luckily we had a number of excellent moderators when this happened and working together we were able to stem the flow of these mongrels getting in. It took a number of months to fully slow them down. Never been able to shut them down and never likely to be able to.

We used an number of different human verification programs and settled on one that had you add one or two pieces of a jigsaw to complete a picture. This was brilliant at stopping the bots. Don't think they've ever been able to work that one out. The jigsaw wasn't only a great deterrent to bots but it was a bit of fun.

However and yes there is always at least one however..... The spammers started getting smart and hired for a few measly cents 3rd world down and outs to sign up where and when he bots couldn't.

The other however is that older members without the aid of a 10 year old weren't able to figure out the jigsaw and so we started getting abuse emails from people saying things like "It's not the pentagon or some secret society so why the impossible signup?!!!" and way more abusive and colourful than that.

We now use a spelling and comprehension test that I put on myself and believe it or not the bots can't work it out and for some reason the 3rd worlders either can't work it out or don't want to wast the few seconds it takes to answer the questions.

On top if that we for the last few years have employed the services of Akismet that works in conjunction with Spam-O-Matic and Stop Forum Spam and can stop most spammers before the get to sign up.

That, coupled with our brilliant and alert moderator xxxxxx and our fantastic member base that report spam, potential spam or spammers when they see them has helped us keep the forums almost spam and scam free for the last few years and made the moderating process way more easy.

Hope I haven't put anyone to sleep with this massive ramble.

Cheers - Neil
PS And the above's only the half of it...... But not a story for another time.

[cjbfisher]

Good work mods/admin, and thank you.

[Uncle Al]

There is certainly a lot that goes on in the background that we don't see that makes this forum so great.

Thanks to all who toil away in the background to keep the spammers, hackers and other low lifes at bay.

Alan...

[Durham Lad]

Thank you, Add my thanks and appreciation to all who keep this forum running as it is meant to run. Brian.

[Dengue]

What an eye-opener your posts have been Neil. Keep up your great work. what a massive undertaking, 99.9995% of us would not have a clue as to what is involved in repelling the hordes at the firewall and keeping our great Forum safe

[ubeaut]

Have been able to block the following:

sapouli97.lpages.co/teds-woodworking/
hobbymyn.com/woodworking-plans-and-projects/
tedswoodworking.com/new/vsl

Anyone stupid enough to follow any of the above links deserves to get scammed.

Cheers - Neil

[A Duke]

Hi,
What gets me is that you hear of all these scams and rip off artists and how much Aussies have been ripped off but I have not heard of any creep being caught or charged.
Regards