yup, got a spammy forex guy spamming my plexo on my lens about a recent Terry Pratchet book. Should really go check through a few old lenses!

I don't use them that much anymore either. But isn't there an option where they have to be preapproved on plexo modules?

You folks do realize you can, and should, report such activity as spam. If the spam link is to another Squidoo lens, you can go to that lens and report the spamming by using the Report Abuse link at the very bottom of each lens.

I'm not a big fan of plexos. I have some on my Ground Fog Day lens but I get notifications by email whenever someone submits something. There's very little activity. I've seen a lot of plexos on lenses by many different people, and one thing I notice is that there is usually very little activity on them.

I've only got plexos on a couple of lenses, but they don't seem to be getting hit by any spammers.  Haven't noticed any changes to traffic to the lenses that do have them.

MobyD wrote:

You folks do realize you can, and should, report such activity as spam. If the spam link is to another Squidoo lens, you can go to that lens and report the spamming by using the Report Abuse link at the very bottom of each lens.

I'm not a big fan of plexos. I have some on my Ground Fog Day lens but I get notifications by email whenever someone submits something. There's very little activity. I've seen a lot of plexos on lenses by many different people, and one thing I notice is that there is usually very little activity on them.

What is the best way to report them?  I am not sure if it worth Squidoo's time to look into it as they seem very busy.  Any advice would be appreciated.  Now I'm getting hit with some crappy get your ex back site.

They seem to be all coming today, I don't know if it all the same person or if there was some new black hat ebook released.  My guess is that it is all the same guy's stuff as they are all junk sites related to CB products.  I think I am just going to make it so that people can not add to my plexo's anymore which is a pity.  It would be great if they were used as intended but for every one good plexo there is 4 bad plexo's submitted.

CeleryStalker wrote:

I don't know if it all the same person or if there was some new black hat ebook released

There's an automated black hat tool for mass adding them. Can't remember where I saw it, someone's signature on the digital point forums I think

What dirtbags, at least each one they plex reminds me to turn that one off.

and todays theme for plexo's seems to be 'get your ex back'.

Wonder if HQ have any plans to deal with this as many of the submissions to plexos musty be successful and the only gains here are the spammers, possibly at the expense of squidoo being seen to link to spam sites. Maybe they should switch all plexos to 'approval required' before links are posted just as a default method of making these spammers have less success.

The_Book_Garden wrote:

and todays theme for plexo's seems to be 'get your ex back'.

Wonder if HQ have any plans to deal with this as many of the submissions to plexos musty be successful and the only gains here are the spammers, possibly at the expense of squidoo being seen to link to spam sites. Maybe they should switch all plexos to 'approval required' before links are posted just as a default method of making these spammers have less success.

I got one of those today!! (I feel so special.) The thing is, they have to be a Squidooer to leave something, but then they didn't leave a link that I could trace to report.

Agreed. I wish the plexos were approval required just like the guestbooks. I use them so rarely that it's not a big deal for me to handle spam as it happens, but if I was using it more, yikes!

Yep, thanks to this thread I began paying more attention to my plexos and there was the "get your ex" back link.

I get the notice in my emails about new plexos but it doesn't say what was actually plexo-ed, while comment notifications tell you what someone said.

I haven't been hit so hard that I want to get rid of plexos, yet, though. I love the concept community participation that's concept behind them. Maybe they need captchas?

Hmmm, I can also see a potential problem, though, because you can put in your url and then change the title. So the title could look like it's part of the plexo but be a link to something totally unrelated. Bummer!

Last edited by Ener-G (03/01/2009 11:02 am)

Ener-G, I had 13 spam links this morning from the "get your ex back" bandit. What a scumbag!

Half were on food lenses, so I deleted the comments and left the plexos as-is so people can still leave recipe links. The other half were on my notary lenses where I have plexos with legal forms and resources. I'm no longer allowing adds on those plexos, but it took me a couple of hours to reset everything.

Thanks for bringing this up, Pixelrage. I'm sorry you felt the need to abandon your plexos, but I totally understand!

I've had several health expert hits this morning, had the get your ex back hits yesterday, too. 
Most of mine are set to approve first, but a few aren't, so I check each one and have changed those plexos to have to approve first.

I love plexos, but in most cases I'll be changing them to not allow submissions.  Too bad.