Forum Spam

It seems that these spam users are all coming from Pakistan. Would it be too much of a stretch if I permaban an entire country?

 

not even the CSTSF is safe from these terrorist attacks

 

It seems that these spam users are all coming from Pakistan. Would it be too much of a stretch if I permaban an entire country?

I have no issue with it. It's not like you're being racist, if the spammers are all indeed coming from one source, then block the source. It's likely one person using a bunch of proxy servers to prevent his I.P. address from being blocked though. You'd think people would have better things to do...

 

 

Can't you just limit something for new users from Pakistan or what? Like for example that they can't post for a day.
whatever the case: make sure that if someone tries to join and is from Pakistan, make sure that that person gets notified about the spam issue and maybe provide a way for contact so that anybody serious from there can still join.

 

Why don't you just require initial posts from new members to be approved?

 

Why don't you just require initial posts from new members to be approved?

the bots are posting threads and now can even comment on threads, so wouldn't that qualify as the initial post required for approving?

whatever the case: make sure that if someone tries to join and is from Pakistan, make sure that that person gets notified about the spam issue and maybe provide a way for contact so that anybody serious from there can still join.

I think something like this should be done if possible.

 

the bots are posting threads and now can even comment on threads, so wouldn't that qualify as the initial post required for approving?

I mean require anything someone tries to post to be approved until they have a post approved.

 

I mean require anything someone tries to post to be approved until they have a post approved.

So instead of just moderating spambots we add new users into the mix and potentially double our workload on this issue. I'm really not seeing the benefit. It will also inconvenience any new users.

 

Okay, just go with what you came up with.

 

Well I have implemented a simple country-based block that stops the rego form from appearing for Pakistani registrants with a message that tells legit users to contact an admin or mod so that their user account can be set up manually. I should note that while this doesn't block spambot registrations it certainly blocks human assistance. The advantage of this is that it doesn't affect any existing users.

If my theory is right then spam should slow down to a crawl. *crosses fingers*

 

It doesn't seem to have worked. I just saw one spam thread and one spam profile post.
There is a slight possibility that the spam has decreased though, but this is just a guess.

 

Well there are a smaller portion of these spam messages that come from neighboring India. However given that this is the first incursion in the last 3 days I am willing to wait and see what the spam rate turns out to be.

 

It seems that spam has greatly decreased. Although there is a small amount of spam still appearing, the appearance of spambots seems to now have decreased.(That or the moderators started getting way more active, although I believe this is not the case).
I hope whoever is running these spambots doesn't notice this and starts running them from a different location(fake IP or not).

 

Huh, that's funny, I never get to see any spambots....

I've only see two in the entire time I've been on the forums.

 

Huh, that's funny, I never get to see any spambots....

I've only see two in the entire time I've been on the forums.

It'll depend on when you're awake, since there's a few hours early in the morning (for north america) where most of the mods aren't online, which is when most people notice spambots.

 

It'll depend on when you're awake, since there's a few hours early in the morning (for north america) where most of the mods aren't online, which is when most people notice spambots.

To be more precise, I think it's somewhere between 7:00-12:00 UTC, as I always see them in the morning and my time zone is UTC+1:00, so yeah...

 

Couldn't we just go to a better captcha system?

 

Couldn't we just go to a better captcha system?

There's no such thing

 

There's no such thing

What do you mean? So are these accounts registered by real people but the spam posts are done by computer programs? Thats the only way i can see captcha being bypassed