Spam?

[[wcip]Angel]

Holy crapage! You guys are fast! I just reported a spammy thread not 30 seconds ago and now it's gone! Methinks pressing the "report"-button sends out the "Bat-Bolty signal" on the night-sky.

Good work:)

[Bolty]

Holy crapage! You guys are fast! I just reported a spammy thread not 30 seconds ago and now it's gone! Methinks pressing the "report"-button sends out the "Bat-Bolty signal" on the night-sky.

The cool thing about being me is I get credit for things I didn't do.

Thanks, Griselda!

-Bolty

[Griselda]

The cool thing about being me is I get credit for things I didn't do.

Thanks, Griselda!

-Bolty

Hey, you give me the tools to do what I do here. :wub:

You should have a 10% raise also.

[Jarulf]

*Hands Griselda a Christmas cookie*

[Griselda]

*Hands Griselda a Christmas cookie*

Thanks! Good thing I have cookies enabled on my browser!

*Hands Jarulf some holiday toffee fudge*

[Knijnknelis]

Thanks! Good thing I have cookies enabled on my browser!

*Hands Jarulf some holiday toffee fudge*

Let's hope he has holiday toffee fudge enabled on his browser.

[Guest]

yeah!!i think some of the spams comes from bots.wonder how to counter that.:huh:

[Bolty]

yeah!!i think some of the spams comes from bots.wonder how to counter that.:huh:

90% of the spam comes from bots.

People have coded bots to go after almost all major forum softwares. They register emails at hundreds of different places, auto-register, auto-confirm, and post spam. There's no defense to this. People cite ideas of making it so people have to register for 2 days before they can post, but even if this forum software could do that, I'm sure it wouldn't stop the bots at all.

We can't ban by IP because they use wildly different IP addresses - in fact, they're likely running from virus-infected computers whose owners don't even realize they've been compromised. The Armory forum is their favorite target; not sure why, something in the bots' code does that. We can't ban by email domains because that would ban a significant portion of our legitimate userbase.

We ban users and delete posts on a daily basis. This creates a strain on our admins; it's annoying to have to clean up this crap day after day, but we do it.

-Bolty

[[wcip]Angel]

And we appreciate it:)

I think there exists in some forum types a feature which denies all users with less than x posts to post in a specific forum. If such a feature could be employed in the armory, it might cut down spam. (A user would have to have x (e.g. 10) posts in order to post in the armory) Then again, such a feature might not exist. If it did, you'd probably have thought of it already.

[Bolty]

Angel' date='Feb 27 2007, 08:09 PM' post='124938']
Then again, such a feature might not exist. If it did, you'd probably have thought of it already.

Nope, doesn't exist. :(

-Bolty

[[wcip]Angel]

What about creating a sub-forum for new arrivals. All newly registered posters would only be able to post in this sub-forum; they would not be able to access any other boards. They would introduce themselves and tell us why they want to be part of the Lurker Lounge Experience®. Mods (or perhaps all existing LL-members?) would be able to 'accept' (by the click of a button) new potential members as fully-fledged LL-posters, which would give them access to all the other forums.

A kind of "Ellis Island" for the Lurker Lounge:P

[Munkay]

Angel' date='Feb 28 2007, 09:01 AM' post='124979']
A kind of "Ellis Island" for the Lurker Lounge:P

You do know that does not connote a positive experience, right? :P

Cheers,

Munk

[ima_nerd]

yeah!!i think some of the spams comes from bots.wonder how to counter that.:huh:

Has no one else noticed jahzonaa's avatar and the resulting irony of this post?

The "Ellis Island" seems like a reasonable idea. Although, it will probably just turn into a sea of spam, meaning when legit users join, admins have to sift through massive amounts of spam to approve them.

[[wcip]Angel]

Is there a feature would would prohibit posts based on word restrictions? E.g "if user post includes words "britney", "XXX", "valium", etc, then deny post" In an Ellis-Island-forum, restrictions on popular spam-words would cut down on spam without necessarily removing any potential members.

I'm just spitballing here. I don't know if forum software has any of these features..


I'm a mod at www.battlefield.no and we were hit by spam-bots a while back. I don't know what the management did to solve it, but they did. I could put in a word with the higher 'ups and ask them what they did.

[Munkay]

Angel' date='Mar 3 2007, 09:47 AM' post='125212']
Is there a feature would would prohibit posts based on word restrictions? E.g "if user post includes words "britney", "XXX", "valium", etc, then deny post" In an Ellis-Island-forum, restrictions on popular spam-words would cut down on spam without necessarily removing any potential members.

I'm just spitballing here. I don't know if forum software has any of these features..
I'm a mod at www.battlefield.no and we were hit by spam-bots a while back. I don't know what the management did to solve it, but they did. I could put in a word with the higher 'ups and ask them what they did.

I guess that means no posts on Britney Spear's doing XXX while on Valium?

I guess I can live with that... maybe :(

:P

Cheers,

Munk

[Frag]

I guess that means no posts on Britney Spear's doing XXX while on Valium?

I guess I can live with that... maybe :(

:P

Cheers,

Munk

If I see *ONE MORE* advertisement for Britney Spears pr0n *twitch* I'm going to take Sally here (*pats the gun) and "get to it!!" *twitch... :blink:

It's been what? A decade of "Hey, see this tramp naked!"

I'm bitter, rawr,
~Frag :ph34r:

[[wcip]Angel]

I spoke with my guys and they had employed 2 strategies for removing the spambot-threat.

1. Visual identification key at user-registration. A field of letters and signs are shown. They must be input into a field or else the registration will fail.

2. All newly registered members are put in a group (titled "noobs" by the way). Noobs can only post replies, not threads. When they have a postcount of 5, they're allowed to post threads.

[Griselda]

We currently have #1 active on the site. In fact, Bolty upgraded the forum software to get "improved" visual recognition going.

I'm concerned that if we did #2, the bots would be sophisticated enough to be able to post anyway, and their posts would be more difficult to find and delete.

The real question, I guess, is whether we want to go to manual approval of all new members. That's the only thing that would really work, but it has drawbacks too.

[[wcip]Angel]

Do we get a lot of new members these days?

In regards to #1, my guys recommended Captcha. I don't know if this helps or not...

[Griselda]

Angel' date='Mar 3 2007, 12:48 PM' post='125227']
Do we get a lot of new members these days?

In regards to #1, my guys recommended Captcha. I don't know if this helps or not...

We get a new actual user every couple of days. We get several new spambots every day. I think we're using captcha.