Spam

[Jastynccratty]

Spam content removed by moderator

[o00scorpion00o]

WTF is that???

[MonkeyMagic]

Isn't it obvious??

[o00scorpion00o]

Hey there Monkey,


Is there no escape from this crap anywhere??? that's so annoying! 

[Cornelius]

It should be at a minimum if all registering security are set at maximum to prevent robot scripts to register...
If the spammer registered manually, it's a bit harder; an admin/mod can ban the person's ip or range from ever enter or register again. Also, posts with certain words (like those above) can be banned and set to be auto-deleted. Spam-posts like those with all the smileys are harder to auto-delete...

[o00scorpion00o]

Maybe Alan can get that sorted! 

[MonkeyMagic]

True... not sure where they come from but it could even be a spider sitting on the server that can create SQL entries for members, but it could just be a really unhappy customer lol

Not sure what Alan can do but I am sure he would be sick to death of having to delete them all, I'm pretty sure its only him and at times Gary that delete them. You could get the IP from the server stats pretty easily and then you could start some defense against restricting IP strings from the spammers

They are all crap too, but it seems like someone is actually posting similar wording to the relevant topic - who has so much time to waste is beyond me...

This SMF forum is just a open source add-on. And I don't think GM will spend up on buying something better haha
ES forum is the same platform though... I wonder what they do? Or maybe its just frequented so often by moderators its not noticed.

That is one thing Alan could do if he really wanted, was make each post reviewed by Admin prior to publish. So he & Gary perhaps would review the post before releasing it on the forum, with the amount of spam going on lately compared to real posts it might be quicker that way!!



cheers & beers
MM

[Cornelius]

SMF have pretty good tools built in to fight spam, but some manual intervention are required of admins where there's a real person registering and then start a spam-script. I doubt there's a spider at the sql server; that would require the spider to know admin's passwords to the server sql-base...

The similar wording to topic posts are usually a script with a dictionary inserting random words and sentences into the posting, along with the spam links it intends to post... It's a pain in the a**...

Sometimes, an admin has to be a hardliner to fight spam; there's often not enough to ban the spammers ip, since the spammer often swap ip frequently. It's often enough to ban the users c-subnet ip range (255 addresses), but sometimes, one have to ban an entire b-subnet (65535 addresses). if the spammer have a neighbour that really interesed to be a member here, and the spammers subnet are banned; that neighbour are then out of luck usually... Banning an entire A-subnet (16.7million addresses) are not a good idea.

When a forum are plagued with a spammer, the admin usually have to be vigliant only a couple of days to weed him out.

Anyone know if that 'enter the letters in the picture above' security are activated at registering here? that helps very much blocking scripts/robots registering...

[Bikemad]

Maybe Alan can get that sorted!

If only it was that simple.
Since I became a moderator in September 2009, I have deleted over 48,300 members and banned over 2,800 in an attempt to keep this forum free of spam, even though 55,827 attempted logins have been blocked so far, there are always some spammers who are going to get through, it's like fighting a losing battle at times.

I won't go into details as to what determines which members are banned or deleted, as it would make it easier for spammers to find a way around it.

The forum currently has a membership of 1,510 members out of the 49,878 who have joined since May 2007, a total of 10,482 (mainly spammers) joined during August and September 2010 alone!
Unfortunately, I spend a large proportion of my time dealing with spam and spammers in general, and this time could be put to much better use, like helping legitimate members who require assistance or just supplying additional information etc.

I'm sure there are steps that could be taken to reduce the number of spammers registering on the forum, but this can only be done by a forum Administrator, and our Admin (GoldenMotor) seems unable to implement anti-spam measures that I have previously suggested to him, so I have no option but to continue doing it manually.

As neither myself or Gary are able to monitor the forum 24/7, it's inevitable that some Spam posts are not going to be removed as quickly as we would like, but I can assure you that we will continue to remove it as quickly as possible.

Alan
 

[GM Canada]

My favorite thing about the spammers is being online while they are spamming. I notice it takes several minutes for some spammers to do several posts and only a few seconds to delete them

Gary

[Bikemad]

The forum currently has a membership of 1,510 members out of the 49,878 who have joined since May 2007

Over the past four days another 210 members have joined the forum, and I have had to ban and/or delete 205 of these because they were spammers!

In order to prevent any further increase in spam links being inserted within members' profiles, I have had to temporarily suspend the ability for members to edit their account profiles. So unfortunately most of you will not be able to add website links to your profiles, or change avatars and signatures etc. for the time being.

I have spent ages trying to find a way of just restricting new members from altering their accounts, but unfortunately I could not find a way of doing it, so everyone has had to be restricted, because of a few persistent automated spammers.

I will continue to try and resolve this situation as soon as I can come up with a method of blocking these spammers, but in the meantime, if you need to have something changed or updated on your profile, just send me a PM with the required details and I'll see what I can do.
I am not offering to do this for spammers!

Alan
 

[T5T]

Alan

 I and everyone here is very grateful for the work you do to keep this spam sh!t on the outside, many thanks again ...
 And I think it's important to get that stated.

[GM Canada]

I have to agree! The time and effort to keep out the spam and the dedication involved in helping others is second to none. Of course we do have a lot of contributors, but Alan certainly deserves top honours, especially when it comes to welcoming and helping the newbies.

Gary

[MonkeyMagic]

nice topic  
  
??

There must be some new spam trend going on where actual people are going onto forums posting spam... I have a big inkering that its outsourced, I see heaps of stuff for spam and malicious conduct job requests on outsourcing sites/forums its pathetic!

What a complete waste of everyones time lol

[Bikemad]

They must be very good at their job:

Date Registered:   Today at 05:04:40 AM
Last Active:   Today at 05:05:05 AM
Topic posted:      Today at 05:05:47 AM

They've registered, received email and activated their account, searched for somewhere to post and then created and posted, all in 67 seconds!

I still think it's automated.

Alan