Spam

[Derek]

Yeah, sorry, it seems like some of the froggy smilies got replaced in the upgrade.

I'm pretty sure some of these spammers are actually human. Or at least they use human beings to register.

[False.Genesis]

There are still some registering, either they are humans, or they know how to use search engines, and parse the answers for the registration questions from the results.
(Afaik you could enter fulltext questions to google....)
Not sure if the 2 questions boxes are really that effective. Well i hope they are.

@Derek: What about more mods?  

EDIT: Ah, same thought, cool. Damn humans.

EDIT2: Just another thought, if someone wanted to specifically target and flood this forum, it is still easily possible to hardcode the answers to these questions. Nevermind my paranoia though.

[EshDee]

Oddly enough, at some other forums I visit, there are adbots increasing in numbers despite captchas and recaptchas.
And some of them even quote other replies in a thread, and make it seem that they've posted it themselves. I really do think these are humans that are spamming.

[Xiagan]

Thanks Derek!

And some of them even quote other replies in a thread, and make it seem that they've posted it themselves.

They are the most tricky ones. Luckily I am good at remembering posts/writing styles and so I (nearly?) always get them. Usually it is the first or second reply in the same topic, though...

[Align]

Seems to have dropped off the map recently!

[False.Genesis]

I'm just saying this now, after a long time of silence there's a new wave of spam incoming. I'm currently deleting ~10 spam topics per day and banning the bots behind them, hope it doesn't get more...
Would be nice if someone did something against it.

[bstrey]

If non-admins had the ability to "flag as spam" it might be easier to sort through at the very least. I've also seen forums where, before creating a thread, you need to answer a simple question related to said forums. As an example, we could use: "What is the name of the protagonist?".

Other than that, I don't see how it can be limited.

[Xiagan]

I'm just saying this now, after a long time of silence there's a new wave of spam incoming. I'm currently deleting ~10 spam topics per day and banning the bots behind them, hope it doesn't get more...
Would be nice if someone did something against it.

yeah, me too... No idea what to do, though...

[False.Genesis]

If non-admins had the ability to "flag as spam" it might be easier to sort through at the very least.

This would not be useful. I'm using the forum's RSS feed so my PC makes the sound of truck when someone posts and i'm like YAAY SPAMS TO BAN.

I've also seen forums where, before creating a thread, you need to answer a simple question related to said forums. As an example, we could use: "What is the name of the protagonist?".

This was exactly what used to be there all the time, since ~2011, when the first big spam wave started.

Other than that, I don't see how it can be limited.

Seems that they moved hosts, as some subdirs that were on the server are no longer there, the forum member list is back (it was an empty page before), and the forum's version number jumped from 1.1.17 to 1.1.19. So apparently whatever spam protection was  there got lost during the move.

That said, the questions require to register were a bad choice imho.
I know of enough people who were initially unable to register because they were not able to spell "independent" right, apparently.
I had sent a nice SMF registration antispam plugin to derek back in the days but apparently it wasn't good enough or dunno.

I'm also worried about the wordpress version used for the blog. It's kinda old, and the exploit list available is quite long.

yeah, me too... No idea what to do, though...

Mmm.. Try to use an exploit to get in, and apply some extra security this way?
If i had the chance i'd certainly patch the thing for good.
But no, better not this way.

[False.Genesis]

So, we're now at 108 123 spam posts within a short time. Any chance for some antispam? I'm sick of deleting this shit and banning half of the internet by IP, and stopped doing so few days ago because it's a useless effort.

Someone could at least give me the right to delete users with all their posts, I'm kinda lazy to remove every single spam post manually.

EDIT: Plus here's a possible solution for the bandwidth outage problem near the end of a month. SMF is actually stupid enough to deliver a captcha image with text that doesn't change. So spambots can keep requesting new captcha images over and over and will eventually be able to solve the challenge, wasting bandwidth in the process. There's Bad behavior SMF mod which will prevent spambots from actually seeing the site they requested (wasting even less bandwidth).

[bstrey]

Oh, the irony of spam posts in the spam thread...

[Chibi]

Oh, the irony of spam posts in the spam thread...

It's brutal.

[False.Genesis]

I'm working on getting the necessary attention, dw

EDIT: Deleting this load is of no use, so i'm not doing it (for now). The spam will come back anyway.
EDIT2: Heh, at least there's no spam bots on IRC 

[Derek]

Added the registration questions back, which should cut down on most of the spam. I'll add the other mods if it doesn't. All the existing spam has been deleted (that was a lot!).

And if the site goes down again this month, let me know, and I'll upgrade the hosting.

[IcyEyeG]

Thank you Derek! Let's see how it goes.