Enemies at the Gate

TheOrk · Post by **TheOrk** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 7:16 pm

Hey everybody!

Haven't you all noticed how the numbers of spammers are really starting to increase around here? What's worse, now they're not content with just clogging up the member's list, they're starting to pollute the boards themselves.

I'm just wondering if there's anything that we(namely Troy) can do to stop it? Like ban all those addresses for life or something? It seems like a waste of time to just go in and delete them one all one at a time manually.

Post by **SavaTheAggie** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 7:21 pm

Yes, it is a problem. I've just deleted and banned 9 users, and two posts to the forum from them. I've had to delete and ban some 40-50 users in the last three days.

Ugh.

--Tony

footsteps · Post by **footsteps** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 7:54 pm

I want to publicly recognize that yours is not a thankless job:

Tony -- thank you for all the work you do on our behalf. Same goes for Troy, the Admins, and the Mods.

Alan

Remyth · Post by **Remyth** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 8:23 pm

footsteps wrote:I want to publicly recognize that yours is not a thankless job:

Tony -- thank you for all the work you do on our behalf. Same goes for Troy, the Admins, and the Mods.

Alan

I absolutely agree with this post. I think that I speak for everyone when I say Thanks You Very Much Admins and Moderators!

In Christ,

smcginnis · Post by **smcginnis** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:10 pm

Yes, thank you (Admins & Mods) for doing what you do.

I'm not sure how, but maybe a way to stop spammers more would be to update the registering process. I know that there's already certain e-mails blocked and also that case-sensitive thing, but there might be something more you could do.... For instance, since a lot of the spammers seem to be selling prescription drugs, you could ban urls or e-mails that had common medicines in them (like 'valium' for example—there seem to be quite a lot of those), and make it so that if they have those anywhere on the registry form, they can't sign up.

~smcginnis

Recluce · Post by **Recluce** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 10:22 pm

I am a member of the phpbb forum where they talk about things like forum security, etc. There are programs people have written that you can upload and integrate with your forum software that will prevent these bots from registering. Chech out this page where they make mention of a program that makes you answer simple questions in order to register your account, things like "Are you a human?" and "What is 2 + 3?". These are questions any person can easily answer, but they will stump a bot (computer program that seeks out forums and registers these fake accounts). Troy I suggest you seriously consider getting something like this. I know I am going to make the suggestion for the DBPro forum I mod. We get probably 15-30 bot accounts each month.

Post by **Athos** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 12:23 am

I haven't really noticed the increase, or many spammers at all on the boards. I guess this is a testament to how well the admins do their job.

Steve

Post by **Troy** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 8:37 am

I will look into the mods on that page, but we already have visual confirmation turned on (where you get the image of a code word and have to enter it is) which is supposed to deter spambots. I suspect that what we are dealing with are actual people in India somewhere getting paid $2/day to get the bots passed the visual confirmation step.

Troy

HenrytheV · Post by **HenrytheV** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 9:57 pm

Can you make it so that the admins have to ok an account before it can post? I've seen that on some sites, and I didn't know if it would work here.

Ristridin · Post by **Ristridin** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 8:02 am

Can you make it so that the admins have to ok an account before it can post? I've seen that on some sites, and I didn't know if it would work here.

Seems like a good method to me, but it will result is a lot of more work for the admins. But comparing to the work the need to do now with all these spammers, maybe it isnt much more.

Post by **architect** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 12:21 pm

Ristridin wrote:
Can you make it so that the admins have to ok an account before it can post? I've seen that on some sites, and I didn't know if it would work here.
Seems like a good method to me, but it will result is a lot of more work for the admins. But comparing to the work the need to do now with all these spammers, maybe it isnt much more.

I think our current method is best. One of the strengths of CC is that it is easy for members to join and participate. Lugnet has suffered in recent years because it is so difficult to join. I would not want CC to have the same problems.

Ben

ZIGGY! · Post by **ZIGGY!** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 9:52 pm

I never really understood what spammers are. However it seems to me that by not allowing people to put a website in their profile it will defeat their purpose(unless I am misunderstanding what they are), I`ts not like so many of us care about showing a site on our profiles.

Post by **Bruce N H** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 3:35 am

ZIGGY! wrote:I`ts not like so many of us care about showing a site on our profiles.

I disagree. Those little icons at the bottom of everyone's post are links to things like e-mail, website, AIM, PM, etc. All of those come from your profile and are the ways we can interact. In this thread alone you can find links to Tony's personal website, Troy's Bricklink shop, and four other people's Brickshelf galleries. If you want a quick link-list of castle fan sites, go to the member list and see people's links.

Bruce

ZIGGY! · Post by **ZIGGY!** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 12:53 am

Yes but if the spammers don`t post then what we put in our sigs don`t make a difference, in the side info whitch you see when checking out guys you can stop websites, understand

Lord_Of_The_LEGO · Post by **Lord_Of_The_LEGO** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 1:23 am

ZIGGY! wrote:understand

No.

And I agree with Bruce.