Battling Spam on Scified - Security Updates

As many of you may have noticed, Scified has been the target of some relentless spam attacks from people trying to promote pirate links to watch the new Star Wars movie online for free. Promoting such links is a clear violation of our terms of use agreement and so we have been tirelessly working to keep the site rid of such content.

The attacks mainly began on Christmas Eve and have continued since, however not as aggressively since we continue to delete and ban all spammer accounts. Some are still trying however, by any means necessary and have taken to attacking our forums, comment sections, reviews and even news articles.

Because of this, I have implemented a secondary approval system for new articles being posted to Scified, from anyone who owns or is an editor of a site here on Scified. How it works is, upon posting a new article, whether you've posted 1 or 100 other articles in the past, before your article is viewable publicly, a staff member or I must approve it. Not only that, upon updating any existing posts, your original content will be saved in a backup directory and your newly updated post will again require re-approval. 

It's unfortunate that spammers like this exist, but they're innevitable. All we can do is keep their content off our site as much as possible. 

If you spot spam or fishy looking content anywhere on Scified, please use the "Report Reply" button if the content is in a reply to a topic, or notify a member of our staff or moderation team.

I have opened up registration now since the new approval system is now active. Hopefully these attacks subside.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to message me or reply to this topic.

Thanks