Suspicious new forum members

[leftpoole]

I believe that I have noticed a 'Troll'. A very new member with so far around 6 posts , all of which are irritating to the person they have answered to in Forum. I am going to monitor in my own time to see what this person actually does. I shall if necessary note and report to Moderators.

[casadmack74]

[moderator note: this post was a new thread by a spammer, since banned. The thread has been merged to retain subsequent posts]
so around march 2020 i started regularly using my road bike that i impulsively bought second hand pre pandemic (specialised secteur sport triple 2012 ~ nothing special). a few months of regularly cycling and i managed 76 mi with plenty of elevation. now, after 5 months out and more or less no daily schedule, is it possible to regain the fitness that pushed my bike 1000s of miles approx 5 months ago? and what would be the most efficient/fastest way to do that? i just want to be as fit as possible so i can really enjoy cycling again in the summer. would it just be to keep upping the amount of time cycling with at least a day of rest i between?

thanks in advance.

[DevonDamo]

If any of you are interested in understanding the ways in which this site is at risk from spammers, scammers and hackers, take a look at this thread from earlier today:

[thread removed by moderator]

That explains the reasons why I was also suspicious when I saw this thread. Now cut and paste a line from the OP's post above into a Google search (in quotation marks so Google looks for that exact phrase) and see what you find. It's exactly the same with the other thread the OP has started on this forum. It's likely these two new forum members are, in fact, the same person, as they're using the same modus operandi.

It would be good if everyone got into the habit of being suspicious of new posters asking dull questions. It only takes a second to click on the 'posts' number under their username to see their previous posts. In this case, you'll see that they've started another dull post earlier in the year and failed to acknowledge any of the responses. If nothing else, that tells you that they're a bit rude and don't deserve your time, but if you're smart you might also spot that the story the OP's two questions is telling doesn't make sense. What's happening here is someone who either doesn't speak English, or doesn't speak 'bike' is cutting and pasting from other sites to camouflage that fact in order to sneak in (probably malicious) links.

Again, I've reported it. However, the other one I reported earlier today is still up, including the dodgy-looking links.

[Paulatic]

A simple search of casadmack74 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=casad ... ent=safari
will show their interest in many subjects began in January21

[DevonDamo]

I've reported them already, so hopefully this won't be available to look at for much longer, but there were two dodgy threads that came to my attention today. I'll only link to the second one, but there's a link in my reply on that thread which will take you to the first thread. But be careful if you do look at the first thread as there are three dodgy-looking links the OP has shoe-horned in:

[threads merged by moderator]

(I think it's worth highlighting this stuff for the reasons that have been stated earlier in this thread: the best way for a forum to stay safe from spammers, scammers and hackers is for the members to be both vigilant and clued-up as to what the threat looks like.)

[DevonDamo]

A simple search of casadmack74 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=casad ... ent=safari
will show their interest in many subjects began in January21

Thanks - that tells a bit more of the story, i.e. they're setting up accounts using the same login details on multiple sites to do this stuff. Presumably this sort of thing can be done by bots, so the culprits can quickly get vast quantities of dodgy links out there on the internet to catch out the unwary.

[simonineaston]

The world's full of these people... the other day, I was cycling along the Frome when I passed a couple of guys with a Voi scooter - grown-ups, mind - not teenagers... and as I passed I heard one say "OK, now go for it!". It wasn't until I was a couple of hundred yards farther along that the meaning of this scene dawned on me, which was that the two blokes had pitched the scooter into the river. Now, exactly how is that going to bring any benefit at all to either of those chaps??
(The good news is that the scooter fell onto a mud bank and not into the river itself and I have told the Voi peeps where it is.)