Hundreds of pages of spam posts in two hours

[erc]

Our community was recently overrun with bots that created more than 100 spam accounts and hundreds of pages of spam topics.

I just wanted them out of the database, so I ran a search in the AdminCP for all users created today, and deleted them.  I probably should have marked them as Spam, but I noticed it early this morning, and acted pre-caffeine.

Now I have the hundreds of pages of forum topics to clean up, but I can't find a simple way to bulk delete all forum topics created today.  There must be a way in the AdminCP?  If not, I can clean it up in the database with a few queries, but would really prefer not to go that route.

Edited July 4, 2023 by erc

[erc]

I gave up trying to find an easy way to do it in the interface and ended up removing the topics from the database after making a backup.

Although if anyone has another solution, I'd be interested in hearing it.

[Marc]

There is no simple way in which to do so for all topics created today, but you can do it per forum if needed. If you select the dropdown at the side of any forum, you will see delete/move content. It then gives you a filter so you can filter by day if needed.

You should never delete items directly from the database by the way. It can cause you issues in the future if things are missed

[erc]

I'll restore the backup, and do it the correct way, thank you.

I wonder if anyone else is receiving a spike in spam, or if we're just lucky.  It looks like registrations are being done manually (not bots) and getting through recaptcha and the spam defense options at level 1. 

Once they're in, they're using an automated script to post spam as fast as the forum will allow without triggering the flood protection.

[Marc]

14 hours ago, erc said:

I wonder if anyone else is receiving a spike in spam, or if we're just lucky

You are certainly not the only one. There is quite a large uptick in spam lately, unfortunately. We do have more measures planned to try and combat this.