"Anonymous" jokes/spam

[AllenP]

This guy has been spamming the TestStand board for weeks:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-TestStand/Chuck-Norris-Facts/td-p/1544324

It's gotten a lot worse lately.  Is there any way to deal with this kind of spam?  Can we ban Anonymous posters?

[Darin.K]

I'll have to agree with Chuck on this one, sounds like the solution to the problem is a roundhouse kick to the face...

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

And why a different email posted in the footer of each post?

-AK2DM

[Darin.K]

I assume these are newsgroup posts mirrored to the forums site.

[Laura F.]

These messages are posted to the newsgroups and mirrored to the forums so there's not much I can do except delete them when they show up.  The Anonymous account is used when a user posts to a newsgroup but they use a name already in use in the forums.

[altenbach]

Laura, are the newsgroups really still relevant or could that be stopped?

Looking at e.g. comp.lang.labview, there is about one post per month and it's mostly spam about shoes and fake designer bags. The glory days of usenet are long gone.

[RavensFan]

Does anybody really still use newsgroups?  Why wouldn't we direct them to the forums at the ni.com link in order to post messages.?

I don't think that many people actually post messages by way of newsgroups as we'd see a lot more "anonymous" messages than we do.  It is very rare to see a message from Anonymous.

[Laura F.]

It's true, the newsgroups are not very relevant now and do not get much use.  "Anonymous" is not the only account that indicates a post from a newsgroup however.  It's only used when the user name is already taken in the forums.

Unfortunately there's not an easy way to disable the newsgroups.  It's something we would like to do once we have resources available.  My team is brainstorming ways we could try to block this user. I had hoped it would go away, as it had in the past, but obviously just my "hope" isn't enough

I will keep you updated.

Regards,

Laura

[AllenP]

Looks like either he went away on his own or you found a way to keep him from coming.  Either way, thanks!

[Laura F.]

I think I found a setting that is keeping him away   I hope that it continues to stick!