Spam?

[[wcip]Angel]

For those of you who don't frequent the D2 boards (specifically the Armory), there's been numerous spam-attacks for the last couple of weeks. Bolty has told us to hit the 'report'-button on sight, which I am more than happy to do, but isn't there an alternative to this? Surely Bolty must get sick and tired of having to edit and close several spammy threads a day.

Also, out of my own perverted sense of curiosity: Why is only the Armory targeted? It's not even the most popular forum! Surely, a spammer would have more success in fooling people to click on his links if he can reach a wider audience (say in the WoW-forum). This is not meant as helpful advice to any would-be spammers who read this, but just an innocent question as to the reason for spamming a relatively sparsely frequented sub-forum.

Back on track...
Dear Bolty: Is there anything we users can do besides hitting the report-button? Would you like to hire temporary forum-mods to help you root out the growing number of spam? I wouldn't presume to be so bold as to offer my own services, but I'm sure there are many suitable candidates who could lessen your workload considerably by removing objectionable spam.

Just a friendly suggestion:)

[vor_lord]

Angel' date='Aug 21 2006, 01:56 PM' post='115912']
Also, out of my own perverted sense of curiosity: Why is only the Armory targeted? It's not even the most popular forum! Surely, a spammer would have more success in fooling people to click on his links if he can reach a wider audience (say in the WoW-forum). This is not meant as helpful advice to any would-be spammers who read this, but just an innocent question as to the reason for spamming a relatively sparsely frequented sub-forum.

It's my belief the spam is from bots. AFAIK (it's been 3.5 years since the last forum reregister though) there is no visual "pick the numbers from this picture" style authentication when creating a new account on Invision. You simply get a password mailed to an email address.

Very bottable. Who knows why the Armory? Maybe it's the first in a list somewhere, or the last...

I don't think it's a live person trying to put spam about unrelated things here.

[[wcip]Angel]

In other words, if someone were to install a visual sign recognition-thing to the registration-process... no more spam?

edit: Oh!! And more importantly, all our clever, sarcastic jabs at the spammers were for naught??:o

[vor_lord]

Angel' date='Aug 21 2006, 05:22 PM' post='115918']
In other words, if someone were to install a visual sign recognition-thing to the registration-process... no more spam?

Fortunately yes! The visual recognition we've all seen in a number of places is designed to combat exactly this kind of automated approach.

edit: Oh!! And more importantly, all our clever, sarcastic jabs at the spammers were for naught??:o

Unfortunately yes! You are talking to.... well.... not a brick wall, but just as unresponsive.









*I think*

[Kylearan]

Hi,

It's my belief the spam is from bots. AFAIK (it's been 3.5 years since the last forum reregister though) there is no visual "pick the numbers from this picture" style authentication when creating a new account on Invision.

I also think the spam comes from automated bots. Other forums, blogs and podcasts I read suffered from automated spam as well, until they installed an anti-spam question when posting something. This killed the spam almost completely.

I hate these visual recognition thingies, though. I don't know how much this board can be "modded", but instead of a visual recognition scheme, what about a random question like "What is x+y?" with x and y randomly chosen? This kind of question could be asked every time a new thread is tried to be started, or a new user wants to register. Posting an answer to an existing thread could be left as it is now, to reduce tedium. This should stop bots from spamming this forum.

-Kylearan

[vor_lord]

I hate these visual recognition thingies, though. I don't know how much this board can be "modded", but instead of a visual recognition scheme, what about a random question like "What is x+y?" with x and y randomly chosen? This kind of question could be asked every time a new thread is tried to be started, or a new user wants to register. Posting an answer to an existing thread could be left as it is now, to reduce tedium. This should stop bots from spamming this forum.

It would be really easy to write a program that could answer this question (that's why the visual recognition stuff is so prevalent these days). But if it wasn't a standard feature of the Invision Power Board it's unlikely someone would go to that effort so it would probably work.

[Baajikiil]

Hi,
I also think the spam comes from automated bots. Other forums, blogs and podcasts I read suffered from automated spam as well, until they installed an anti-spam question when posting something. This killed the spam almost completely.

I hate these visual recognition thingies, though. I don't know how much this board can be "modded", but instead of a visual recognition scheme, what about a random question like "What is x+y?" with x and y randomly chosen? This kind of question could be asked every time a new thread is tried to be started, or a new user wants to register. Posting an answer to an existing thread could be left as it is now, to reduce tedium. This should stop bots from spamming this forum.

-Kylearan

At the AB Hellgate London site(http://theamazonbasin.com/hgl/forums), they also recently had a spam problem. They set it up so that new members could not post new topics without the topics being verified by an admin first. After the poster had submitted a few good topics, they were given free access.

Of course, this puts a larger onus on the mods though... They set up a visual recognition question as well.

[Griselda]

At the AB Hellgate London site(http://theamazonbasin.com/hgl/forums), they also recently had a spam problem. They set it up so that new members could not post new topics without the topics being verified by an admin first. After the poster had submitted a few good topics, they were given free access.

Of course, this puts a larger onus on the mods though... They set up a visual recognition question as well.

I wonder if spambots are smart enough to post replies if they can't make new topics.

[[vL]Kp]

I wonder if spambots are smart enough to post replies if they can't make new topics.

If they aren't by default, I doubt it would take long for them to be enhanced. That'd be even easier than teaching them to answer the x+y questions proposed above, since it would not involve reading free-form text to find what it needs. All it'd take is the botmaster browsing the site long enough to identify the URL of the add-reply button (you can see it when you mouseover Add Reply) and configure the bot to pick random plausible values for the thread-id parameter passed in.

Another possibility to slow the spam would be to impose a steep replies/time limit on new posters. Something like: if total_posts < 5, that IP address can post at most once per hour. This would not only cripple spam bots (which must then use one open proxy per post in order to produce spam at any significant rate), it'd also curb overly enthusiastic new users who register and proceed to raise several dead topics just because the newbie had something important to say.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

It would be really easy to write a program that could answer this question (that's why the visual recognition stuff is so prevalent these days).

Of course it would be easy, but it would only be worthwhile for the spammers to do this if this mechanism would be included in some standard forum software like the Invision Boards, and thus would be the same on multiple boards. If you modify the board software yourself to add the question, no spammer would change their bots for just that one board.

-Kylearan

[Lucky Barbarian]

[/delurk] Greetings.

Angel' date='Aug 21 2006, 10:56 PM' post='115912']
Also, out of my own perverted sense of curiosity: Why is only the Armory targeted?

I'd say this is because it's the top in alphabetical order. Making it so that the first post can't be made in Armory might, just might, reduce the amount of spam bots. This would only affect the bots attacking the forum in alphabetical order, though.

My friend has a bot problem in his forum as well. He is able to put up such a difficult bot filteration system (image with text) that it's difficult even for a real person to figure it out. I don't know about Invision Boards, though.

[lurk] :shuriken:

~Lucky

[[wcip]Angel]

We're riding a new wave o' spam people.

I don't know how often you guys check the Lounge, but I check in roughly 20 times a day and every other time there's a new topic in the diablo2 or Lounge-section with spammy goodness. Any reason for the sudden resurgence of spammers?

[Griselda]

I think it's new bot technology. I'm checking and deleting frequently when I'm at home, and we're IP-banning when there's a pattern, but we are getting 10 spambots registering for every true member.

About the only option that I see would be to impose some harsher measures on new registrations. There is already a visual recognition thingy in place.

[Bolty]

You might not be aware of this, but anywhere between 2 to 10 users get banned and have their posts deleted every day here.

We do IP bans when we can. Sometimes we can't. We do many email domain bans as well. But we often can't do such bans when many legitimate users come from these sources as well.

Some users get banned even before they post - they register with usernames that are obviously spam accounts, like zo123ash739.

-Bolty

[Griselda]

You might not be aware of this, but anywhere between 2 to 10 users get banned and have their posts deleted every day here.

We do IP bans when we can. Sometimes we can't. We do many email domain bans as well. But we often can't do such bans when many legitimate users come from these sources as well.

Some users get banned even before they post - they register with usernames that are obviously spam accounts, like zo123ash739.

-Bolty

For example, I've banned 71 people in the last 9 days. B)

[Bolty]

For example, I've banned 71 people in the last 9 days. B)

*reviews performance logs* Ah yes, you're due for a 10% raise this year.

-Bolty

[Jarulf]

*reviews performance logs* Ah yes, you're due for a 10% raise this year.

-Bolty

Yay, so banning every single memebr would yield a 480% raise? Or do you handle it multiplicative and thus give somce 1560% raise? Hey Griselda, regardless of which, I can create new accounts in a desired ammount as long as I get a 5% share of any raise .... :D

[Griselda]

Yay, so banning every single memebr would yield a 480% raise? Or do you handle it multiplicative and thus give somce 1560% raise? Hey Griselda, regardless of which, I can create new accounts in a desired ammount as long as I get a 5% share of any raise .... :D

You can have a 1,000,000% share of any raises that I get. :P

[Obi2Kenobi]

*reviews performance logs* Ah yes, you're due for a 10% raise this year.

-Bolty

What's 10% of 0? :wacko:

[Jarulf]

What's 10% of 0? :wacko:

Wrong question, what is 10% of 0 and AFTER having removed 1,000,000% of the 10%!!

Of course, if we go by Swedish notation, which would seem appropriate since I am Swedish and ignore the syntax error of a second ",", that would be 10% of 0 after having removed 1%, which would be 9,9% of 0. The fact that the end result is the same is irellevant, it is the princip that matters!!