I've been noticing a lot of new groups created lately seemingly used only to post "watch x live stream" spam. All of these groups are created by brand new accounts. Would it make sense to impose limits on account age / number of posts before being able to create groups?
At this rate, the "new content" and other recent activity links are pretty much useless as they're flooded with spam. Sure the spam is posted in the normal forum threads too, but it seems open groups are over-represented.
There seems to be an influx of spam threads with links to downloading movies or watching T20 cricket online. Even groups being created with these intentions. All this makes me a little wary since this account of mine is linked with my origin account. Is my paranoia about my account security too far stretched?? Hope this spam influx issue gets resolved soon.
To have access to you're Account data they must hack Origin, this annoying Dude just created a lot of accounts here and is now constantly spamming his annoying Watch Tralala vs. Lalala links if you don't click on one of those links you have nothing to worry about.
Yeah, I was going to say something about that too. I can't recall that many spam-bots on the old forum. Forum needs better filters and-or more moderators.
Prohibiting the group creation for someone with less then set number of posts (3-5-10...) combined with time limits makes sense. E.g. no less than 5 active posts and no less that 24 hours from the account creation. Oh, and totally excluding the 'offtopic' zone forum from count is a good idea.
It will prevent from instant spamming into 'offtopic' threads followed by the spam-group creation. Some inconvenience, may be.
But it's hard for me to imagine a real person that has just joined the forum with a handful of offtopic posts and urgently needs to create a new group.
That spam is no risk to anyone (unless you follow those links, which may contain literally any sort of internet-related threat).
It's annoying, but not dangerous at all. It means, that someone had created a handful of fake forum accounts, and now uses them to make a lot of references and 'fool' the search engines pretending to be really popular (all those tags, keywords etc). Not that it works well (unlike it used to something like 10 years ago), but many still practice that.
It's a shame, that BW forum is not protected against such a crude sort of SE spamming.
Thanks! However my concern is about my account credential security since this forum uses same credentials as origin client so anyone cracking my credentials here will automatically have control over my origin client account I know I am being super paranoid but its disconcerting seeing all this spam attack. I doubt if its just one person with so many alt accounts. Looks more like a malicious spam attack. The "off topic" section is plagued with it!
I won't have any problem right if I clicked any of those topics or their links?
If you only look at the Topics, Profile or Groups they created it's ok but i wouldn't click on any of those links they have posted there because they can lead to Viruses Trojans etc.
Oh well at least mobiles are less likely to be targetedIf you only look at the Topics, Profile or Groups they created it's ok but i wouldn't click on any of those links they have posted there because they can lead to Viruses Trojans etc.
However my concern is about my account credential security since this forum uses same credentials as origin client
In case you had not noticed - all those spamming accounts (which were not so many) were fresh users with a gibberish name and a single active post, it did not look to me like any of those had been hijacked.
I don't think you're in some special sort of danger, especially if you follow the most basic security rules ( like not following unknown links, not sharing your log-pass, keeping your AV software up to date etc).
Hey guys,
We are aware of this issue and our moderators are blocking commercial spammer accounts, flagging the spam groups for deletion, and we are putting new temporary measures into place to reduce the effectiveness of these spammers from bothering you about their weird sports and movie watching streams. This includes:
As others have mentioned, these spammers are annoying but they should not affect your account security or the functionality of the site. They are accessing the site the same way you are, and so the above measures will limit them from creating throwaway accounts to drop a single message.
Jesse and I will investigate more robust spammer features that we can enact for the long term. We appreciate everyone's patience and you have my apologies if this affected your enjoyment of the site today.
Cheers,
Jessica
Hey guys,
We are aware of this issue and our moderators are blocking commercial spammer accounts, flagging the spam groups for deletion, and we are putting new temporary measures into place to reduce the effectiveness of these spammers from bothering you about their weird sports and movie watching streams. This includes:As others have mentioned, these spammers are annoying but they should not affect your account security or the functionality of the site. They are accessing the site the same way you are, and so the above measures will limit them from creating throwaway accounts to drop a single message.
- New groups must be created by someone whose account is associated with a game title
- Users who create a new account must have their first post approved by a moderator before it goes public
Jesse and I will investigate more robust spammer features that we can enact for the long term. We appreciate everyone's patience and you have my apologies if this affected your enjoyment of the site today.
Cheers,
Jessica
Does that mean groups have been deleted? 
Does that mean groups have been deleted?
^
I can't get into any of them anymore.
I merged the few spam related topics together.
No the groups feature is not removed. We have just made a new requirement that only users that have games registered against their account can create them. If you don't have a game registered to your account you can still join groups just not create them.
I don't mean the feature, I'm talking about the groups we created. Are they gone? Do we have to create them from scratch again?
What was the group name?
Never mind, the group I created is safe and sound. 
It's called "British Detective Series" if you're interested. 
I noticed that when I go to the groups home page there is a button that says I can't create a group. I hadn't planned on starting a group, but I wonder why I don't seem to meet the requirements to start a group?
I already got a group but it seems like i can't create another one too. Maybe they just disabled that function for everyone because there are no new groups created since the watch Sports Spam incident.
Looks like the spammer is back making groups again.
And not getting to far. 
Yep, $%^&*#$@% Spammers are at it again. I am also worried about them joining groups we created, planning on a spam invasion......
Looks like the spammer is back making groups again.
And not getting to far.
Now I wish I hadn't said anything .
Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
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