Spam comments from objectionable content fomr

Diana Cole

This has never happened to me before, but I'm getting spam comments submitted thhrough the objectionable content form for my teamraiser.  I've had 5 comments on 4 differenet participant's personal pages in a 6 hour period.  Here is an example: "It's a real pleasure to find somonee who can think like that" and "Dag nabibt good stuff you whippersnappers!".  Is there a way to add a captcha to the objectionable content form so that this does not continue to happen?

Kent Gilliam

Can you confirm these are spam or could a participant's supporters be using the "report content" function thinking they're making a post the participant can read? Can you share a link to the participant page(s) where these are coming from?

 

Thanks!

Kent

Diana Cole

Kent Gilliam:

Can you confirm these are spam or could a participant's supporters be using the "report content" function thinking they're making a post the participant can read? Can you share a link to the participant page(s) where these are coming from?

 

Thanks!

Kent

I assumed they were spam because of the content of the comments, vague, typos, etc.. and the timing of the messages.  They all came in between midnight and 5am.  The link from the personal page says:

If you think this page contains objectionable content, please inform the system administrator.", so I'm not sure why someone would think that is a link to add comments.

 

The participants impacted do not appear to be related in any way.  I know one of them personally and I do n't believe she is friends with these folks.  Here are they're personal pages:

http://awla.convio.net/site/TR?px=1052201&pg=personal&fr_id=1160

http://awla.convio.net/site/TR?px=1009061&pg=personal&fr_id=1160

http://awla.convio.net/site/TR?px=1007288&pg=personal&fr_id=1160

http://awla.convio.net/site/TR?px=1024705&pg=personal&fr_id=1160

 

Some of them have personalized their pages and some have not.

  

One of the messages I am considering spam could be an honest attempt to contact our organization but because they used this method, I have no way of knowing who they are or how to contact them.

 

Thanks!

Alicia Searfoss

Diana Cole:

I assumed they were spam because of the content of the comments, vague, typos, etc.. and the timing of the messages.  They all came in between midnight and 5am.  The link from the personal page says:

If you think this page contains objectionable content, please inform the system administrator.", so I'm not sure why someone would think that is a link to add comments.

 

The participants impacted do not appear to be related in any way.  I know one of them personally and I do n't believe she is friends with these folks.  Here are they're personal pages:

http://awla.convio.net/site/TR?px=1052201&pg=personal&fr_id=1160

http://awla.convio.net/site/TR?px=1009061&pg=personal&fr_id=1160

http://awla.convio.net/site/TR?px=1007288&pg=personal&fr_id=1160

http://awla.convio.net/site/TR?px=1024705&pg=personal&fr_id=1160

 

Some of them have personalized their pages and some have not.

  

One of the messages I am considering spam could be an honest attempt to contact our organization but because they used this method, I have no way of knowing who they are or how to contact them.

 

Thanks!

We get those too.  I opened a trouble ticket a while back to see if I could add a captcha, but they said there was nothing I could do. 

Kent Gilliam

Alicia Searfoss:

We get those too.  I opened a trouble ticket a while back to see if I could add a captcha, but they said there was nothing I could do. 

Let me do some digging today and see if there is any sort of work-around that is known. Please post a reminder for me if you don't hear from me by tomorrow. It's a crazy time around here with BBCon coming up.

Kristin Larson

Kent Gilliam:

Let me do some digging today and see if there is any sort of work-around that is known. Please post a reminder for me if you don't hear from me by tomorrow. It's a crazy time around here with BBCon coming up.

We received a lot of similar messages last year  too-- mostly  just random letters. A few have come through this year, also with specific comments.

Kent Gilliam

Kristin Larson:

We received a lot of similar messages last year  too-- mostly  just random letters. A few have come through this year, also with specific comments.

I'm still digging and trying to see if we can come up with some sort of solution for you all. I promise to share the info as soon as I can confirm what the solution is.

 

Kent

Rebekah Trachsel

Kent Gilliam:

I'm still digging and trying to see if we can come up with some sort of solution for you all. I promise to share the info as soon as I can confirm what the solution is.

 

Kent

Ken - I know this thread is quite old, but did you come up with a solution?  We frequently have this problem as well.  It is spam and not really objectionable content.  We have found that it does not stop.  It keeps happening on the same pages for days and days, not ending at all.

Jon Reich

Rebekah Trachsel:

Ken - I know this thread is quite old, but did you come up with a solution?  We frequently have this problem as well.  It is spam and not really objectionable content.  We have found that it does not stop.  It keeps happening on the same pages for days and days, not ending at all.

Hi Rebekah, 

 

What you will need to do is set up a survey with a CAPTCHA, then they would not be able to submit this without filling that in.



It would be a site wide change, so anywhere this link is for a TeamRaiser it would take them to this survey.



You should make the survey 2 questions. One is a Unlimited Text Value Question and the question text you can use from the actual objectional content page "Please enter a brief statement explaining why you think the content of the page in question is objectionable."



The second question should be a CAPTCHA and make it required.



Set up the thank you page that it goes to to be the same as the thank you page for the original objectionable content page



"Thank you for notifying us about this content. We will review the page as soon as possible and take appropriate action."



Once you have that survey set up and live, submit a support ticket with the link and Blackbaud support can put the work around in place.



(Also since it is a survey you can download the survey responses to see the comments.)

Kent Gilliam

Rebekah Trachsel:

Ken - I know this thread is quite old, but did you come up with a solution?  We frequently have this problem as well.  It is spam and not really objectionable content.  We have found that it does not stop.  It keeps happening on the same pages for days and days, not ending at all.

Rebekah,

 

Can you share a link to a personal page for your event? Perhaps one that has received one of these spammed "objectionable material" posts?

 

Kent

Rebekah Trachsel

Kent Gilliam:

Rebekah,

 

Can you share a link to a personal page for your event? Perhaps one that has received one of these spammed "objectionable material" posts?

 

Kent

All of our pages are getting spammed on the objectionable content link on the bottom of all the PF pages but here is one of them:

 

http://jccf.convio.net/goto/johnvannort

Christina Relacion

Kent Gilliam:

Rebekah,

 

Can you share a link to a personal page for your event? Perhaps one that has received one of these spammed "objectionable material" posts?

 

Kent

Hi Kent,

 

We also get this happening from time-to-time with our T/R events. I opened a ticket up about it last year and was also told by support that nothing can be done about it. It's just a bug but I don't think an actual bug "ticket" was created to look into it further. I haven't had any in a few weeks but the next time someone reports receiving them, I'll share a link, too.

Christina Relacion

Jon Reich:

Hi Rebekah, 

 

What you will need to do is set up a survey with a CAPTCHA, then they would not be able to submit this without filling that in.



It would be a site wide change, so anywhere this link is for a TeamRaiser it would take them to this survey.



You should make the survey 2 questions. One is a Unlimited Text Value Question and the question text you can use from the actual objectional content page "Please enter a brief statement explaining why you think the content of the page in question is objectionable."



The second question should be a CAPTCHA and make it required.



Set up the thank you page that it goes to to be the same as the thank you page for the original objectionable content page



"Thank you for notifying us about this content. We will review the page as soon as possible and take appropriate action."



Once you have that survey set up and live, submit a support ticket with the link and Blackbaud support can put the work around in place.



(Also since it is a survey you can download the survey responses to see the comments.)

Hi Jon,



I may contact Nicole/Quentin to see if she can help me with getting this set-up for our Teamraisers. Is it something that we can do at the blueprint level or is it event-by-event basis?

Jon Reich

Christina Relacion:
Hi Jon,



I may contact Nicole/Quentin to see if she can help me with getting this set-up for our Teamraisers. Is it something that we can do at the blueprint level or is it event-by-event basis?

Hi Christina, 

 

It's a global change. Once you have the survey set up w/ CAPTCHA (outlined above), Support simply swaps that in place of the standard/default one.... and that will update things for any and all TeamRaiser in your entire Luminate instance.

 

We'd be happy to help in any way we can, so don't hesitate to reach out!

 

Thanks, 

 

Jon

Tanna Lewis

Jon Reich:

Rebekah Trachsel:

Ken - I know this thread is quite old, but did you come up with a solution?  We frequently have this problem as well.  It is spam and not really objectionable content.  We have found that it does not stop.  It keeps happening on the same pages for days and days, not ending at all.

 

Hi Rebekah, 

 

What you will need to do is set up a survey with a CAPTCHA, then they would not be able to submit this without filling that in.



It would be a site wide change, so anywhere this link is for a TeamRaiser it would take them to this survey.



You should make the survey 2 questions. One is a Unlimited Text Value Question and the question text you can use from the actual objectional content page "Please enter a brief statement explaining why you think the content of the page in question is objectionable."



The second question should be a CAPTCHA and make it required.



Set up the thank you page that it goes to to be the same as the thank you page for the original objectionable content page



"Thank you for notifying us about this content. We will review the page as soon as possible and take appropriate action."



Once you have that survey set up and live, submit a support ticket with the link and Blackbaud support can put the work around in place.



(Also since it is a survey you can download the survey responses to see the comments.)

 

 

Hi all,

I am resurrecting this older post because we are getting spammed through this link and finding a solution has been frustrating.  I tried the option above and was still getting spammed.  BB Support said this was because the spammers are still directly accessing the link as it exists in the system and to resolve it, I would need to remove the email address from the SDP "F2F_OBJ_CONTENT_EMAIL" - which didn't work at first because we actually have the notification email addresses set at the individual TR level under the advanced event options.  So once I removed email addresses from both the TR and the SDP, of course, the "Objectionable Content" system-wide link disappears from the bottom of the personal pages.



How are those of you out there dealing with this?  Are you forced to link to the "objectionable content" survey by pulling in a reusable pagebuilder page in the personal page footer?  This was my next move to try to fix this, but I don't love that it will have to be applied individually to each TR.  I also thought about just putting a dummy email in the SDP, but I am not sure if the system still gets hit a ton by the spammers then, or if the lack of the email address means the direct link is no longer accessible at all?



Also, this solution seems to leave out the fact that you can no longer tell what page the user finds "objectionable," right?  I worked around it by using S334 to pull the TR and participant ids out of the url - (so the Message Catalog item now reads If you think this page contains objectionable content, please <a href="http://support.childrenscoloradofoundation.org/site/Survey?ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&SURVEY_ID=2601&fr_id=[[S334:fr_id]]&px=[[S334:px]]">inform us</a>.), then I used S334 again to pull the IDs into a hidden text update field on the survey, but due to a character limit on that field, I couldn't format it with the full url to the personal page as I would have liked, to make it easy for an admin to just click from the survey notification.  So does anyone out there have a better solution for that aspect, too - to make it easy to identify and get to the page which is being complained about?



Lastly, if spammers are still directly accessing the system link - whether we get an email notification or not - doesn't that open us all up to the possibility of a Denial of Service attack?  I really hope BB will just look into fixing the default form by just putting a CAPTCHA on it, which would make life much easier for us clients, and improve security accross all of our systems...



Thanks so much!

Tanna  

Mary Spiros

Thanks for resurrecting this post Tanna. We've seen an upswing in objectionable content notifications that are clearly spam as the message is just gibberish.  Has Blackbaud considered adding a Captcha to the default form?

Amanda Lee 2

Trying to resume this post again... as I just had to manually delete, one by one, 200 spam comments on a personal fundraising page. I can't seem to find any answers to this and it has been going on for years. Does anyone know of a fix yet? It's very irritating and time consuming, and our donors are even noticing and getting mad about it.

Any help appreciated, thanks!

John Miller 3

Hi Amanda, thanks for bringing this to the community!


I don't know if you've seen this article or not:

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/95157


It explains a way to enable CAPTCHA on Personal Fundraising guest books.  If you did this already, there is a way to disable the guest books if they get too difficult to manage (but that hopefully is a last resort).


-John Miller

Luminate Online Product Manager

Bri MacBain 2

Amanda Lee:

Trying to resume this post again... as I just had to manually delete, one by one, 200 spam comments on a personal fundraising page. I can't seem to find any answers to this and it has been going on for years. Does anyone know of a fix yet? It's very irritating and time consuming, and our donors are even noticing and getting mad about it.

Any help appreciated, thanks!

Hi Amanda,


Can you post a link to a fundraising page this is happening on?  Might be helpful to come up with a solution to see what's happening!

Amanda Lee 2

John Miller:

Hi Amanda, thanks for bringing this to the community!


I don't know if you've seen this article or not:

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/95157


It explains a way to enable CAPTCHA on Personal Fundraising guest books.  If you did this already, there is a way to disable the guest books if they get too difficult to manage (but that hopefully is a last resort).


-John Miller

Luminate Online Product Manager

Thanks, I don't think we were aware of this option. Will try it now. 

The link to the page is http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/TR?pg=fund&fr_id=1040&pxfid=3012


 

Amanda Lee 2

Amanda Lee:

John Miller:

Hi Amanda, thanks for bringing this to the community!


I don't know if you've seen this article or not:

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/95157


It explains a way to enable CAPTCHA on Personal Fundraising guest books.  If you did this already, there is a way to disable the guest books if they get too difficult to manage (but that hopefully is a last resort).


-John Miller

Luminate Online Product Manager

Thanks, I don't think we were aware of this option. Will try it now. 

The link to the page is http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/TR?pg=fund&fr_id=1040&pxfid=3012


 

 

Actually, I just checked this and it was already "on". I've been deleting the comments but we have a small team and several hundred pages do trying to track all of them on a daily basis is a bit time consuming. 

Tanna Lewis

I still use the workaround I was ironing out in my post above from 2015.  It still has the same imperfections I was unhappy with then, but it is better than nothing!


As I recall:

1. I set the "F2F_OBJ_CONTENT_EMAIL" SDP to have a fake email address, in order to still use the system-native (and TR-universal) "objectionable content" message at the bottom of the fundraising pages, while not flooding a real inbox. (As I mentioned before, an imperfection to that aspect is that I think it probably doesn't safeguard against spammer bots hitting the direct link behind the scenes and still attempting a DOS-type attack based on traffic.  But at least you won't receive a billion emails.)
2. Next, I altered the Message Catalog item for that "objectionable content" link so that it directs to a survey form instead.  The survey requires captcha.  It sends an email to me and our Communications team whenever it is submitted, so we can immediately review the complaint.
3. On the survey, I used S334 to also grab the necessary IDs from the url to know which page is being complained about, and submit that through hidden fields, so it comes through on the email notification we receive.  This was the part that still remains very very very unpretty... but it serves its purpose.  We have over 20,000 TR donations each year, and yet we only see an "objectionable content" complaint maybe once or twice a year.  So luckily a pretty rare issue.  Which means unpretty solution is fine for now.
4. Make sure an email contact for objectionable content isn't assigned at the individual TR level.  For us, this lives in the TR setup under " Select Event Options > Edit Advanced Options > Define Event Options > Participant Personal Page Objectionable Content Notification."

Let me know if you want to try to replicate this and have more questions. You might need Blackbaud to help out if you don't have access to your SDPs or Message Catalog.



EDIT: Sorry, noticed after the fact that your problem is not actually about the Objectionable Content link, but about public posts on a page.  We don't use that feature, so unfortunately I don't know much about how it works...But I will leave the rest of this post here for anyone still struggling with the original issue of this thread - the Objectionable Content link, and encourage anyone who needs it to feel free to PM me for more setup detail!