SPAM or worse(?) on canadian trip forums!

AlanS

There are a number of posts by imalemon or someone who stole his user name, that just appeared on a number of the Canadian trip forums. At best they are SPAM and at worst they may contain a virus or spyware.

Don't click on the link. It is NOT a correct Youtube URL. It has a decimal between the "Youtu" and "be" which is not supposed to be there in a real Youtube link. I don't know where it will take you, but don't click on it!

Tim or Emily- a little help here please!

HuskerBob

Who is monitoring these boards? The Canada hotel room description has been posted on several dates on the Canada tours.
Also we see advertising for fake passports. etc. posted several times on multiple boards.

British

I think the absolute worst spam was about May time when someone posted a photo of 'themselves' on two posts and I did a double take, it was the Boston bomber. I was on vacation when I saw it, I had to figure out who to contact at Tauck because I thought it was more urgent than the usual spam, I did get a fairly quick reply with a thank you. But I suspect that the forum is not necessarily monitored on a daily basis and certainly not weekends, all we can do is report using the report button.Has anyone pressed that by mistake like me? Did anyone see the bomber photo I am talking about?

HuskerBob

British, I saw it too. I think it was a "maker" of the fake passports ad, etc. Didn't recognize the bomber pix. I reported the latest posts w/o picture as spam.

Claudia Sails

I wondered about the odd decimal point in the youtube file name as well back when imalemon posted one a week ago or so on several other threads. Did a search on "imalemon" and found earlier posts from the last couple of years. There was a video of a river cruise last year with the same strange decimal point. Several people viewed it and thought it was great. Hummmm When in doubt, don't click on any link.

I think someone at Blount travel has been trying to use the forum to advertise their company. They did a post last week about a Chicago cruise and one this week under a different name for a Washington Dc to Boston cruise. The first could be an oops I didn't realize this wasn't a general travel forum, but by the second I had my doubts. Pretty slimy of then to try and get free advertising on a competitors website. Doesn't make me want to try them.

GreatJourneys

How can any spambot enter the forum and post irrelevant information? I have heard that there are several measures taken to ensure that no spammer can enter the discussion board.

British

GreatJourneys wrote:

How can any spambot enter the forum and post irrelevant information? I have heard that there are several measures taken to ensure that no spammer can enter the discussion board.

I am actually beginning to feel really really concerned about the amount of spam being posted on this forum. The forum has been very useful to learn extra information about specific tours, to read varying opinions, which I also enjoy and participate in for good or ill. I feel many of the questions could be answered by the poster just taking a bit of time to do their own research, or calling Tauck for an answer. if anyone can actually figure out how to join this site, then I would expect them to be able to research most things themselves. Tauck are gradually providing, more and more information for customers, especially when they send the final paperwork, (most recently in nice bound booklets rather than a handful of papers) I guess sometimes based on what questions appear on the forum time and time again. Those who book through a travel agent should expect an agent to know additional information, and if they don't, find out for their customer, or why bother using an agent.
The forum is provided as a service for Tauck customers. I would not want to pay an extra amount of money for my tour just so Tauck could pay someone full time to manage all the posts here. A very small number of their customers use the forum or even know about it. My husband for instance has absolutely no desire to read anything like this, he will do his own research based on real factual information, not based on opinions of unqualified or unverified people posting here.
I think it might be time for Tauck to dispense with the forum and just increase the number of question and answers they already provide. I do think I post some useful information but I do also participate in the lively discussion. All this is much better reading than so many posts that say something like hoping to meet people going on this tour on the same dates as us and then never even saying who they are even when they have weird user name. And then to read a long list of other people who do exactly the same, it's hilarious. The Travel forum is my one and only online distraction, I hope I could do without it(!?). it might be time to close the forum, it's not worth the headache for Tauck.
What do others think?

[Deleted User]

Claudia Sails wrote:

I wondered about the odd decimal point in the youtube file name as well back when imalemon posted one a week ago or so on several other threads. Did a search on "imalemon" and found earlier posts from the last couple of years. There was a video of a river cruise last year with the same strange decimal point. Several people viewed it and thought it was great. Hummmm When in doubt, don't click on any link.

Caution in clicking is always good advice.

However, in the case of imalemon (not aided by the name), it was legit. Here's what I posted in another of the threads imalemon posted:

I, too, was suspicious of the strange (to me) url. Just behind the times, I guess, since here's the explanation that Google introduced youtu.be as a shortened url (in 2009!) to help shorten overall url length.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening

So, youtu.be is a legitimate, Google-initiated (they own youtube) effort to shorten urls.

TauckTim

Hi all,

I just wanted to let you know, we're working on plans over here to decrease the amount of spam coming in. Simply requiring manual approval of new accounts, as has been discussed and requested in the past, isn't possible due to the constant influx of new members (well over 50 a day, every day of the week), so we're going to implement alternative means to restrict the spammers while not hurting the abilities of new people to make regular posts. In the meantime, thank you all so much for your patience and understanding while we work on this.

-Tim