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Spambots

ville 19 years ago

We just had a case of a spambot. It was an automated program the replied to topics, and the user had a link to an online casino in his signature. Please notify me of any such cases, and feel free to ruthlessly delete posts deemed to be made by a spambot.

ZeXLR8er 19 years ago

Hmm, certainly will. It's a tiny bit strange as I've just started getting spam from an online casino aswell.

Coincidence...?

ville 19 years ago

Who knows, but doing automatic phpbb spamming is rather desperate.

Idiota 17 years ago

It seems as if I have to put up a lot less effort to remove all the spamtopics from the boards. Is it because they have decreased in number or is it because another moderator is also checking the forums for them?

ville 17 years ago

I check for them every once in a while, but it's likely not that. There's likely just less spammers around now.

Quanrian 17 years ago

I check almost daily Idiota. Usually whenever I'm bored, so that's probably why. Ville is the only one who can ban them however, but than they just make new accounts.

Idiota 17 years ago

Yeah well I'm glad you do Quanrian. :p They were driving me nuts. I checked the forum many times a day only to find 2-3 spamtopics every time I did. I can't understand how people can be dumb enough to follow the links.

ville 17 years ago

I decided to make new user registration only be allowed by us. I don't yet know how it works, but let's see about it. I also made Idiota and Quanrian admins, you should be able to ban people if need be.

ville 17 years ago

Well that didn't help much, too much trouble to go through some dozen names per day.

Quanrian 17 years ago

"ville" said:
Well that didn't help much, too much trouble to go through some dozen names per day.

Yeah I was wondering what the half dozen emails were about lol. It doesn't give me any of their information. I either click the link or I don't as far as I can tell ? By the way, the bots seem to expect to get banned, because they always have new names ready. We do need to figure out a way to limit fake registrations.

ville 17 years ago

Indeed. I put in a simple question that asks whether you are a human to the registration form, but they seem to be handling that all too well.

Quanrian 17 years ago

"ville" said:
Indeed. I put in a simple question that asks whether you are a human to the registration form, but they seem to be handling that all too well.

Well you do realize that while everyone is calling them bots, some are actual people ? We might do something drastic like not allowing them to post links or pictures until they have x amount of posts. I think this might work, because they all tend to hope that people click their link 'before' they get banned. In the end though we might just have to create a 'junk' forum section that actually allows them to drop ad links into it.

Quanrian 17 years ago

I've added a new forum section, Garbage. The description pretty much sums it up. I've set it to auto-prune daily so we wont even have to moderate it. This should cut it down to some degree, and I have seen it work in other forums. At least now we have somewhere to direct them.

Quanrian 17 years ago

I was looking through Admin panel and something occured to me when I looked at the configuration for the forum itself. Would it be worthwhile to make activation of accounts allowed only by Admin ? I can't remember if this was tried before. I do know the adbots or people posting the ads seem to create a new account everytime they place an ad. I've never seen them post two ads under the same name.

ville 17 years ago

Yes I tried it before, that's when you got a bunch of mails with requests to activate the account, but no other info. We don't really have the time to wade through them all.

Idiota 17 years ago

Also, I've seen adbots post the same spam under the same name after I banned their IP. (The 'paris hilton' one) So sometimes you have to be a bit more thorough.

Quanrian 17 years ago

Would someone else mind deleted the 8 pages of adbot account names ? I've already removed at least half a dozen a day for a while and I'm burnt out. It seems to really start on January 28th, 2007. Just swap the sign up date so it shows last date joined first. Maybe we should think about cleaning the member list (I realize this is extremely drastic of drastic) and starting fresh ?

Idiota 17 years ago

As in, wiping it clean entirely? including real life members?

Quanrian 17 years ago

No, just the accounts that were used for Ads/Spam obviously. Banning them at this point is a waste of time, we mine as well just delete their accounts.

ville 17 years ago

I've usually done that with an SQL query straight to the database. I'll do it straight away, it just takes about 5 minutes.

There, removed all members with no posts and no login ever.

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