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Post by GUEST on Jan 22, 2011 3:37:47 GMT
Hey folks,
Just wanted to let you know that due to an unprecedented level of spammers hitting up the forums, we are temporarily halting new member registrations to clean up any spammers that may already be in the system.
The poor mods have been fighting them left, right and center for a few weeks now and it is getting to epidemic proportions - and spammers, go away - your messages will be deleted and you will be banned, you are wasting everyones time, including your own, so please find somewhere else to play, ok?
Thanks, - Admin
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Post by Maynar on Jan 22, 2011 3:48:48 GMT
Paul: If I may recommend- www.google.com/recaptcha/captchaThis device will reduce your spam signups exponentially. There is a little forum I help administer, and we were run ragged trying to keep up with spammers until we installed this feature. There will still be a few who manage to get through, but our volume of spam was cut drastically, to the point where human intervention was no longer an issue. I hope it works as well for you as it did for us. Good luck!
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Sébastien
Senior Forumite
Retired Moderator
Posts: 2,967
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Post by Sébastien on Jan 22, 2011 3:52:30 GMT
Thanks for the suggestion Maynar ! BTW I'd like to thank everyone who have reported those spam posts
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Post by Vincent Dolan on Jan 22, 2011 10:36:57 GMT
Excellent idea, Maynar; everyone finds those captchas a little annoying, but if they keep out the spammers, I don't think any of us will complain. Especially not me. I reported enough of 'em to be heartily sick at the mere mention of spam.
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Post by Anders on Jan 22, 2011 13:04:10 GMT
Actually, most forum spam these days isn't posted by real humans but by bots - automated computer programs. It doesn't do you any good to try to talk to them.
The kind of spambot we've been having lately - the sort that posts the same spam thread on every forum over and over - is actually just the most primitive kind. The more subtle ones can be surprisingly hard to tell from a human poster.
Signs to look out for is:
-Very generic name, low post count, rarely has an avatar. -Advertisment links in the signature. -Posting wildly off-topic threads or responding to any given topic in extremely vague, generic and often inaccurate ways. (For example: "Yes, I thinks so too!" or "I agee, that is awesome.") -Is unresponsive to direct communication.
Often, the actual spam isn't the main objective, but rather to put out a lot of links that increase search engine traffic.
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Post by Sir Tre on Jan 22, 2011 16:48:50 GMT
if the spam hyperlinks through share a sale... admin can click to see... then all you have to do is copy the hyperlink inot an email to share a sale. it is against their police to spam. they will get dropped from the program.
if i am not mistaken, the hyperlinks are custom for tracking the one doing the selling so they can know who is in need of payment. this will let them know who is spamming. :shock:
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Post by Student of Sword on Jan 22, 2011 19:25:37 GMT
How does the bot register? I thought you have to type a string of alphanumeric that only human can read.
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Post by Bogus on Jan 22, 2011 19:38:08 GMT
Yes, captcha is a good idea--as others have said these spammers are bots and not actual people. A few may still slip through but there should be more than enough mods to take care of the oddballs. Be prepared for occasional "wtf I cant register" emails from people who with weak interweb skills though, I've run into that in the past.
I'm in the process of putting together a blog and am going to try the riddle approach (e.g. how many sides of a triangle sort of thing), not sure how well it will work or if spambots are smart enough to do the heuristic thing...but basing them off obscure but googleable historical events should help. :twisted:
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Post by ArmedGinger on Jan 22, 2011 21:24:31 GMT
Another way to cut out some spam bots is the use of non-free emails only when registered. No Gmail, no hotmail, no yahoo, etc.
Everyone gets an email address from the Internet Service Providers and Ive been on many forums where only these emails or paid email servers are allowed.
Made a HUGE difference.
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Post by Sir Tre on Jan 22, 2011 22:30:52 GMT
share a sell and the like use custome hyperlinks that register a tracking cookie. this will make it able to be tracked as for how they register to a forum with a spam bot... i would assume at some point the human entity controlling it would have to do that. but nonetheless a hyperlink and stuff like that is still the same.. be it bot or butt head.
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SanMarc
Senior Forumite
Posts: 3,193
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Post by SanMarc on Jan 23, 2011 0:42:22 GMT
Well that would make your mebership small as I have yahoo mail and am to poor to pay for something I can get for free, that means more swords for me and less bills to pay out.......SanMarc.
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SanMarc
Senior Forumite
Posts: 3,193
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Post by SanMarc on Jan 23, 2011 0:43:05 GMT
And just to increase my post count... Thanks Paul and the mods who do a great job!!!
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Makoto Pat
Member
Just got my favorite alert status from U.S. Postal Services- Out for delivery!
Posts: 503
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Post by Makoto Pat on Jan 23, 2011 2:35:40 GMT
I would to salute all the mods and Paul for keeping this forum spam free and the good forumites that reported the no good spammers.
Spammers go home!! Plus this forum is filled solely with sword wielding maniacs...why would you mess with them...and ax hurlers...and a few gun nuts....no offense I belong to all the above categories. But once again why?
Good jobs Moderators! Thanks.
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Post by Maynar on Jan 23, 2011 2:48:31 GMT
SanMarc, are you telling us your ISP doesn't give you at least one email address for free?? Time to change providers, my friend. That's something you should get as part of your service package. Mine gives me TEN addys as part of my package. I still use my yahoo 'cause I'm familar with it, but you see what I'm sayin' here.
:shock:
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SanMarc
Senior Forumite
Posts: 3,193
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Post by SanMarc on Jan 23, 2011 3:06:58 GMT
Yeah, but My Yahoo addy will stay with me no matter what IP I have, Hate to chage addys, and my computor Fu is not that great.....SanMarc.
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Post by demonskull on Jan 23, 2011 3:08:56 GMT
I'm a mod on a small forum, less than 150 members. In the last week I've rec'd over 130 new member requests. Out of the 130 requests I accepted two into the forum, the other 128 were banned. Two of which were subsequently banned here, after they started spamming. I noticed a great deal of a mix on the countries of origin for the IP addresses: England, Denmark, The Netherlands, many of the old Soviet breakup countries, Russia, China and several from Brazil. There were even several from the U.S.
My point is , this increase is spam is, it's a world wide issue and is become increasingly hard to distinguish readily who is, and who isn't a spammer. Most of these spammers are aware that they will be banned by useing simple acknowledgment posts and are making their first post as their spam link.
Unfortunately one must ban first if there is even a slight chance you believe the applicant to be a possible spammer. Every spammer that gets through, impacts the integrity of the forum in unseen ways. Another spammer trolling sees the site as a easy mark and more importantly are the good candidates who see spam on a site and are turned off.
Until additional spam protection programs are devised and implimented, we are all at their mercy. A trait spammers are not known for.
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Makoto Pat
Member
Just got my favorite alert status from U.S. Postal Services- Out for delivery!
Posts: 503
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Post by Makoto Pat on Jan 23, 2011 3:39:04 GMT
I say we round all the spammers and place them on a small rocky island in the northern sea. That is my pretend over simplified solution for things I do not understand. Once there I never think of them again.
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Post by ArmedGinger on Jan 23, 2011 5:06:35 GMT
All I did was take my ISP email address and make it forward all emails automatically to my hotmail account. No fuss :mrgreen:
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2011 6:23:36 GMT
One of the more effective methods of prevent spambot registration is to use a custom question and answer field. For example, What is this forum about? or What does SBG stand for? These have similar accuracy and security compared to CAPTCHA-based systems, but is accessible to the visually impaired and is harder for spammers to pass by using decoding programs or by paying humans to do it (there are outsourcing services that will solve 100 Captcha tests for $1).
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Post by Sir Tre on Jan 24, 2011 11:36:39 GMT
spam ala tatami
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