The official what's happening about the spammers thread. MNHQ will only post on this one for the time being (sorry, not being hoity; it's just to save time)

[HelenMumsnet]

Afternoon.

We are currently mopping up after close on 100 (and that's just the last count) spammers posted all over our boards last night and this morning.

Thank you for all your reports. We hope you'll understand that we're not going to reply to them. Please take it as read that we're really grateful.

IMPORTANT: we think we have tabs on pretty much all of the spammers now, so (even if we haven't deleted them all yet) so there is no need to report any more. In fact, any more reports and our system might keel over!

Once we can see the wood for the trees, we'll post again and ask you to report any remaining spam posts we might have missed.

Please bear with us. We are getting there.

Any Qs, do post em here and we'll do our best to answer you.

The problem is that the under the skin spots sometimes hurt so damn much and I KNOW there's pus under there- fighting the urge to squeeze too early can be hard!

Does mnhq have captchas? And why cant we have a limited number of threads started per person per day?

ignore if this has been answered 5000 times already. Freely admit i havent read thread.

Or something that stops a repeat thread from bein posted? That checks for exact wording?

also admit that i dont really want to read as thread seems to have descended in to pus porn

I think they might have the repeat thread thing- is that not the reason for all the @@@@@@@@@ and * malarkey? Different amounts of symbols with the same words?

OOOh clever. Makes sense Blue

I probably made that up. I'm not very techy!

I make shit up all the time. it's like my "thing"

Oh this is where the sporners hang out these days. I thought I'd not seen a good sporners thread for a while.

do I want to know what sporn is?

they're back then. Anyone for basketball?

Feckers at it again...but the sporn diversion was quite juicy ;)

Baby names and Bloggers now hit.

Not been on here for a few days and have just seen all of the spam. Sorry: I reported a few

I won't do it again.

I don't envy you your job though. Think you definitely need some wine.....

Me too Blurry.

Sorry HQ!

How do they DO this? Set up multiple accounts etc?

Bastard bloody spammers

Sorry for reporting all the ones I saw, but this message wasn't visible until I'd done it. oops

Lots in Bloggers

Are they kust targetting a couple of topics? Seems a bit odd if they are, though maybe they have tracked which bits of mumsnet results in clicks. Maybe it's more about the database coding, perhaps theynare hitting from within, so bypassing registering as a user.

Is it worth disabling the Android app? Has that exposed access to the database?

Bloggers, Baby Names and Have You Seen This? are full of spam.

Spam is in "chat" too, but mainly on unanswered threads, rather than in active conversations.

"Book of the month" has been targeted by spambots now.

Hey, what's with all the zombie threads too- loads of old ones with weird messages at the end.

For example

Is this part of the spamtastic fun?

Blimey, my active feed is practically all spam and zombie threads with spam added at the end.