VGMaps

Site Boards => Message Board Announcements => Topic started by: bustin98 on September 07, 2009, 09:22:07 pm

Title: Spammers
Post by: bustin98 on September 07, 2009, 09:22:07 pm
Ok, so I didn't look enough through the settings. I have turned on image verification and new accounts have to be authenticated by an admin.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: magicbay on September 07, 2009, 11:03:40 pm
I think it's a good idea that ya've turned those settings on., Bustin98..

That will give all the admins the chance to approve or disapprove new accounts and govern all the old ones too..
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Maxim on September 08, 2009, 03:02:32 am
Admin approval sucks. CAPTCHA is broken. Take my advice, find a ReCAPTCHA mod, it's the only thing that works (apart from the admin approval), and even then you get some human signups.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: DarkWolf on September 08, 2009, 04:48:58 am
The only down side to reCaptcha is that lately I've noticed I have to generate several before I can get something legible.  But that's not too bad for things like registrations.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Maxim on September 08, 2009, 07:12:23 am
Yeah, they need to scan more books :) But at least there is a reload button.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: bustin98 on September 09, 2009, 11:02:19 am
Ok, I installed the reCaptcha system. We'll see how well it works.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Peardian on September 10, 2011, 04:41:09 pm
So it seems the system we have set up isn't very effective at keeping out spam. And wow, have we really been dealing with them for over two years?
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Revned on September 11, 2011, 12:03:30 am
It seems to me that the spammers are real people, which makes them quite a bit harder to stop.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Will on September 11, 2011, 12:43:56 am
Real people? Hmm...In that case you might want to put that topic in the secret room, before spammers manipulate the information to their advantage. I wonder if those shoe and bikini adverts were copied off from somewhere. If I were accepting new members, I would test their interests and passion of gameplay, cartography or emulation like some sort of survey.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Peardian on September 11, 2011, 01:31:37 am
This (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=279621.0) sounds promising. It basically checks a big list of known spammer IPs every time a user tries to join. If there's a hit, the user is blocked. Even though the thread was started in 2008, it still has recent activity. Think it's worth a shot?
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Revned on September 11, 2011, 11:43:31 am
That seems like it might help. We have so few legitimate new registrations that that's a good place to filter them.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Trop on September 25, 2011, 04:42:03 pm
They certainly are determined aren't they?  I'm with will, make em answer a mapping question.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Revned on September 25, 2011, 07:47:48 pm
I'd be wholeheartedly against something like that. I, for one, never would have joined the forum in the first place if I had to pass a personality test to get in. The only acceptable way to fight this to this is to filter against known spammer IPs, but even that isn't perfect.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Peardian on September 26, 2011, 03:23:06 pm
The filter is definitely worth a shot. The worst thing that could happen is that some legitimate user happens to have an IP on the list and can't get in. However, that's quite unlikely. And, if some spammers do manage to make it through, we can help contribute to the effort by reporting their IPs to the list.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Revned on October 07, 2011, 01:14:28 pm
New record! 7 of the 10 boards have spam on them right now!
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Trop on October 07, 2011, 05:05:12 pm
I only count 9 boards but yeah they're going nuts.  Is somebody around here actually clicking on their ads?
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Revned on October 07, 2011, 05:10:28 pm
There's a secret board >_>
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Trop on October 07, 2011, 09:04:42 pm
Ah.  Well if they appear on that board you know there's a problem.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Will on October 09, 2011, 07:11:28 am
I have a different idea which will halt the spammers enough to buy time for an overall solution, but I don't think you'll like it. My suggestion is to block membership signing directly from the forum and any visitors who would wish to join us would have to e-mail the administrator for an invitation. Just a primitive filter that's all.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Peardian on October 11, 2011, 09:48:27 am
That would certainly work, but it would also drive away potential legitimate users who are unsure about joining. It would be wiser to try something like the IP filter first beforehand, but it is a plausible fallback plan.


Speaking of the filter, is anyone going to implement it? It's been a whole month since I brought it up.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Maxim on October 12, 2011, 06:59:27 am
One very effective thing I did on my site's forums was to make it impossible for people to post URLs in their first 5 posts. Spammers don't like that.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Peardian on October 12, 2011, 07:23:49 am
That's quite clever, though the problem there is that the spambots are still able to register and still have to be deleted manually. Ideally, we want a system that will prevent bots from being able to create accounts in the first place.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Peardian on October 25, 2011, 10:03:32 am
Can we please implement this already? (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=279621.0)

It's been over six weeks and we've only just discussed it and possible alternatives, and the spambots just keep getting worse. We really have nothing to lose from trying it.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: JonLeung on October 25, 2011, 01:19:04 pm
I'll email bustin about it tonight.  I admit I'm not that competent when it comes to forum stuff, so he's the man for the technical stuff.

What I have been doing recently, though, is manually looking at new members before even asking for the required activation.  As I look at the upcoming members list, I use my own judgment to remove those with suspicious-looking email addresses and I also sort them by IP to remove them if there are multiple ones from that same IP address.  And then when there is trouble, instead of just banning a user by name, I now ban the IPs they register and post with, and all the other possible ban trigger options relating to that username and IP.  I really should have done that before.  It's not going to stop the really persistent ones, but it might help a little until bustin implements upgrades to the forum software.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Peardian on October 27, 2011, 12:43:00 pm
Fifty posts and counting. That is one crazy spambot.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Trop on October 27, 2011, 09:25:35 pm
It does seem to be getting crazier.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Peardian on January 31, 2012, 07:29:06 pm
Can we please implement this already? (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=279621.0)

It's been over six weeks and we've only just discussed it and possible alternatives, and the spambots just keep getting worse. We really have nothing to lose from trying it.
And now it's been three months since this post. Has anything been done about this yet?
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: bustin98 on January 31, 2012, 07:41:45 pm
I didn't see this before. Its an interesting idea, so we'll see how it goes. The problem of course is that IP addresses change all the time for spammers. And they just spoof good ones, so its possible a real person is going to get blocked.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: Peardian on January 31, 2012, 08:47:29 pm
I hadn't considered the chance of spoofing. Well, it runs through the Stop Forum Spam website, and checks email as well, so I imagine there shouldn't be too much of a problem with real users getting blocked.
Title: Re: Spammers
Post by: TerraEsperZ on February 17, 2013, 02:00:55 pm
...And we've got another bot spammer.