Spam

[Derek]

"Spam... spam never changes..."

I guess installing the new version of SMF reset the visual captcha to "Medium" instead of "High". Fixed. I hope that's the reason why there was a huge deluge the past couple of days.

I'll make Xiagan an admin, too, so he can help delete spam accounts.

[Xiagan]

Thanks Derek! I hope your measures help and there isn't much need for deleting spam accounts, but if necessary, this will make my work more easy. There must be a new trick with smf the spammers found. The amount in other smf forums I attend has increased too...

[Alphasoldier]

Actually, I believe that SOME spammers nowadays are just humans who are being paid to do shit like that. Easy cash n stuff.

Oh and once again thanks Derek. <3

[Aristobulus]

Actually, I believe that SOME spammers nowadays are just humans who are being paid to do shit like that. Easy cash n stuff.

Oh and once again thanks Derek. <3

If that was the case wouldn't they make less ridiculous, mechanical looking posts? Some of the shit that gets posted looks like it was never once actually written by a human with any sort of understanding of the english language and is just random words and links thrown together.

[Alphasoldier]

Some spamposts in this forum actually made me think a real person made it, seeing it connected perfectly on the topic, but their signatures still had links in them.
Oh and their reactions were general, like they don't know what the forum was about but they did read the post before that.

[Xiagan]

Some spamposts in this forum actually made me think a real person made it, seeing it connected perfectly on the topic, but their signatures still had links in them.

I think some of them just copy parts of the first (or just earlier) posts. This way it looks very on topic.

[vibra6]

Yeah.. what's the deal with that... Make me a mod. i'll help remove them!

[Alphasoldier]

See what I was talking about Xia? =p

[Xiagan]

But his links don't make sense.. sigh...

[Liarra Sniffles]

what you guys need is one of thos anti spam bot things that detect
 advertising and reports it to you,
 then you can just mark the ones that are not spam and it will auto ban the rest.
i have no idea where to get one, but one of my old blogs had one (google it?). 

[GMMan]

what you guys need is one of thos anti spam bot things that detect
 advertising and reports it to you,
 then you can just mark the ones that are not spam and it will auto ban the rest.
i have no idea where to get one, but one of my old blogs had one (google it?). 

I consider that too much work. There are more legitimate new posts these few days than spam (or it's just Xiagan doing a very good job).

[Alphasoldier]

Yeah, Xia has been fairly busy. I noticed a few spam posts every now and then from (I hope) old accounts, and I bet I don't even see everything.

[GMMan]

I find it somewhat useful to look at the Users Online section for spammers. A simple check of their profile usually reveal who they are. And no, the anti-spam mechanisms are still not working. All of the spam members I checked from the Users Online page was registered today.

[False.Genesis]

Admins! Don't give this forum up please! _{(And spare poor Xiagan the work)}

Talked with Xiagan yesterday on IRC about the spams, and here is an SMF addon that may help (not older then 2 weeks, and installing it on my test forum was a breeze):
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2932

Fairly new way to make a captcha, but if it works.. and it does
I have set up a test forum that is already using appropriate captcha images

PM'd Xiagan some more details, and now i hope he can get that addon in, or poke Derek to do something.

Btw, there is SMF 1.1.13 out with some bug fixes, but nothing major that spambots could exploit from what i have seen.

I estimate the majority of the spambots that register here try to improve their google ranks by providing links to websites they want to promote. We can be lucky only a small fraction of these bots actually starts posting, as them collectively waking up would be a disaster. There are bots that registered months ago and still check the forum, although they have not posted a single thing.
Do you guys think its possible to clean the user database from most of these bots automatically? Most of the names are made following a simple pattern, that is [a-zA-z]+[0-9]+[a-zA-Z]*, and many provide the same link twice in their signature... helps identifying them automatically.

Lastly, if that helps anyone i set up a little trap for those nasty email harvesters here, in case some are here. Hopefully these stupid bots pick up the URL and spread it, as it is also in my sig.
_{(Someone has to do something, right?)}

Oh, and this: http://en.spambot.pl/ <-- i lold. Shame on them.


EDIT:
From their site:

Protection against the program
The protection of one’s own websites against the program is included. You simply need to upload to your website server a file entitled ‘spambot.txt’ with the content ‘spambot.pl’. If the program tries to spam this page, it will be announced that spamming can’t be done because there is the file ‘spambot.txt’ on the server. Before spamming, the program always checks if there is such a file on the server.

Worth a try imho


EDIT2 (half a day layer):
Geez, more spam posts... If you let me, i'd help deleting stupid bots and cleaning up the forum  

EDIT3: Another mod that looks promising, just updated today, now works with SMF 1.1.x: http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2502

EDIT4: The images i used for notCaptcha can be found here

[Alec]

Sounds cool, I'd add it but I don't think I have the access to do that.

AFAIK Derek is the only one with the web login craziness?

Maybe I should see if I can get him to hook me up with the info required. I might be able to do that at GDC. (sometimes it's hard to reach him by email cause he's doing crazy Spelunky stuff)