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Spam Inundation

post #1 of 5
1/19/11 at 10:54am
Thread Starter 
"This is getting out of hand. Now there are [insert any number here] of them!"

The Neimoidians from Episode One had it right. This is getting insane. I propose some options for dealing with this nonsense.

1. A MUCH more difficult process of signing up. Think huge, difficult captchas or a question only humans can answer.

2. Removing the time limit in between reporting posts. When there are seven spam accounts active at once and thirty a day, the wait between user reporting gets bothersome.

3. Forcing users to have a certain number of posts before starting new threads or posting links. If they try to post a thread or link in a post before reaching said post count, they're redirected off-site so they can get themselves stuck in a automation loop.

4. Stopping all user account creation. Extremely radical, and it's not the best decision, but stopping new users for 2-4 weeks might force spambots to redirect somewhere else so that when the ban is lifted, they'd have forgotten us.

Anything else? They're mainly Polish. Is there anything that can be done with blocking specific IP addresses?
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post #2 of 5
1/19/11 at 11:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

"This is getting out of hand. Now there are [insert any number here] of them!"

The number that you're seeing is smaller than the amount we get. There were about 22 threads all with different accounts filtered out since yesterday on top of the 6 or 7 spammers that got through (some posting multiple times).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

1. A MUCH more difficult process of signing up. Think huge, difficult captchas or a question only humans can answer.

It's VBulletin though. Plugins would have to be made or installed and they likely won't help now:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...t-It?p=2099123

I'd guess the above might explain why the spammers are out in force. There definitely has been a big increase recently.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

2. Removing the time limit in between reporting posts. When there are seven spam accounts active at once and thirty a day, the wait between user reporting gets bothersome.

The reports are helpful but we mostly find the spam when we are available. We don't rely on the reports to find the spam. Reports about the inline posts are the most useful so don't worry about not being able to report all of the posts.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

Anything else? They're mainly Polish. Is there anything that can be done with blocking specific IP addresses?

Every so often we get new types of spam so there's a period between updates when that will get through. The Polish spam will soon be dealt with like the Russian spam was.
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post #3 of 5
1/19/11 at 1:44pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

It's VBulletin though. Plugins would have to be made or installed and they likely won't help now:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...t-It?p=2099123

That's something else I've been curious about for a while. Why is VBulletin so prevalent? I mean, sure it works well as a forum platform, but it's very old. Shouldn't someone have come up with something more modern that supports greater customization by now?

Thanks for the reply. I'll hunt inline posts more now.
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post #4 of 5
1/19/11 at 2:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

That's something else I've been curious about for a while. Why is VBulletin so prevalent? I mean, sure it works well as a forum platform, but it's very old. Shouldn't someone have come up with something more modern that supports greater customization by now?

I think it's to do with security. Some people who migrate to VBulletin from PHPBB etc do so because their sites got hacked. It is difficult to do much beyond adding a theme to it but it's to ensure the forum can be updated. The plugin code is entirely separate and just overrides parts of the main codebase.
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post #5 of 5
1/20/11 at 9:23am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by CoirmSleertom View Post

cool dude, cool

That's completely hilarious.
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