Two New Tools in the Fight Against Spam: No Follow & Soft Blocking

[Eric Suesz]

We’ve been working hard to remove the ability for spambots to penetrate your Ning Network with bogus accounts. Beginning today, we have two new weapons in our arsenal: No Follow and Soft Blocking. These new approaches should make Ning even more safe and secure for your members. 

No Follow

Spambots attempt to create as many fake accounts as possible, which then attempt to post as much content as possible. Any content that is posted by a spambot will, of course, contain a link to some Web site somewhere. The more links a spammer can build up, the higher up in search those spammy links travel in Google search — until they are ultimately near the top of Google’s search results, competing side-by-side with legitimate businesses. 

One way to take away this incentive for spammers is to add a special tag which tells Google to ignore such links when compiling their search results. This is the “nofollow” tag. With No Follow, links work fine. Click on them and you’ll still go to the same place, but those clicks won’t be calculated in Google’s search results. This thwarts one of the major reasons behind a coordinated spam attack. It can be very effective. 

How will this affect your Ning Network? The No Follow tag will be added to all links posted by members on blogs (including comments), forum posts (including comments), and profile comments. There are a few key exceptions:

• Links from NCs and admins won’t get the No Follow tag. Obviously, there’s no danger of you posting spam on your own Ning Network, so the No Follow tag won’t be added to any of your links. 

• Links on the Main Page won’t get the No Follow tag. We want to ensure your Main Page loads quickly for your members and avoid performing any additional analysis that could affect your Main Page’s performance. 

Soft Blocking 

One of the unfortunate side effects of beating spam is that occasionally the rules that are created to catch spammers can catch a legitimate member. We’ve had reports of this, and we take it very seriously. We’re doing our best to ensure members aren’t blocked from using Ning even if their account is flagged in error. To help combat it, we’ve instituted soft blocking.

In the past, when suspicious accounts have been blocked for an excessive rate of posting, the account has been prevented from signing in to Ning. Now, when an account is blocked for excessive posting, that account will be prevented from adding comments, updates, blog posts, forum posts, and photos and videos — content. However, navigation and browsing won’t be affected, just the ability to post content. After a set amount of time, a soft-blocked account will be allowed to post again. Most important: Anyone who experiences a soft block will receive a clear error message, along with information on how to proceed. 

Of course, if you ever have problems signing in or participating on your Ning Network for any reason, we encourage you to open a Help Center ticket, and our advocacy team will investigate the details. 

[Hugh Jarvis]

You've hit the nail on the head. Happily I "only" get a half dozen spammers a week. They get in, but they can't post to the blog w/o approval.

But why does Ning let them in to begin with..???

And when I block them as a spammer, does Ning banish them for good, including the email they used..?

And report them as a spammer to their email's host provider..?

Let's not only make it hard for them to join, but push back the other direction.

An hour a week times how many million Ning creators is a ridiculous waste of time. You guys want to charge everyone to build here, then step up and block these jerks.

[Sonja]

Good idea!
Send e-mail with a verification link for confirmation

[Marcy Koltun-Crilley]

I still have members on " approval " and reportd the spammer or spam bot to NING yesterday, but the attacks are still comming, so I have to leave it on "approval" which I do not like to do, because members do not want to wait hours or sometimes longer to be allowed to join.

I do pay for NING services and I hope ning is checking my comunity and looking at this spammer or "bot".

Having email conformation would stop this attack ( I believe ) because the spammer is just making up new email addies each time.

It would be way too much work for some one to actually create that many new eamil accounts and check them, unless a spam bot can bypass this somehow.

Real Spammers are easy to deal with, it's these "bots" that are annoying.

[Marcy Koltun-Crilley]

How has " No Follow" and ""soft Blocking" done anything to stop this bot attack I have had in the last 24 hours .

They have made at least 100 tries to join and still going.

They are only stopped because I put my community on "membership needs approval".

On an intersting note.

I have some required member questions that have their default as NO ( which is the "wrong answer")

and after posting about this on a forum post, they are now answering " Yes to those questions.!!!!

Are they reading the forums?

Are these "smart bots"?

( they still do not put real answers down for the other questions and use useless email addresses so I know it's not a real member anyway, )


I have to think and email confirmation would stop this right away.

[Star-Dust]

l am confused, l post acticles on my groups and some has on these things, free to use with link back to their site. Or do not remove the links if you want to share this with others.

Now am l spamming or do l not use articles with links? l was blocked out of my network for three days. All ning's Network. So was this because of the links that comes with the material l use? Was l spamming ?

[Mark lennox]

I'm sorry if I'm coming to the party late on this one but I would like to echo and voice these points:

1) Please let us choose to adopt the nofollow tags. The regular contributers to my network has now stopped posting because they are quite simply getting no link love

2) Even with the nofollows and other measures, I too am getting these damn bots joining my network so member aproval has had to be switched on - thank god for this or else I'd be spammed to death!

Be interested to hear developments - I too am a paying customer but I honestly am thinking of moving the network elswhere. Sorry!

[Eric]

I have a network where nofollow is being applied on the home page AND for admin. What gives?

[Jens]

Hi Eric,

I don't understand this: "Links from NCs and admins won’t get the No Follow tag. Obviously, there’s no danger of you posting spam on your own Ning Network, so the No Follow tag won’t be added to any of your links."

I posted some blogs and they got a no follow TAG too. Could you please answer to this discussion how I can remove the no follow attribute again? I approve new members since more than 2 years and I take care of my network that spam will not be allowed. Why is my network affected with this no follow attribute too?


Thanks,
Jens

[Mark lennox]

Jens, I too would like to know the answer to this..

[LYNDA SCOTT]

Yes, a good way to move a site up in search engine results is to use ingoing and outgoing links that contain keywords relevant to someones search criteria. The more relevant criteria a bot finds-the higher you move on the search page results. While flagging spammers postings is a great idea, won't flagging the legitimate postings along with them (except for admin posts, you said) also eliminate the benefit these relevant links would afford a Ning site?

[Alfredo Barrera Kleinschmidt]

Excuse me Sir.

Is this information in Spanish?

Thanks!

[Eric Suesz]

Ola, Alfredo! We don't have this particular blog post in Spanish. But, we do have some folks in our Spanish groups who can hopefully explain some of the details.