Thread: MOVED: SF

Originally Posted by Dragonheart1991

I don't know if the Mods on this forum know this already. But i've seen for two days straight a constant attack of spam thread advertising products and linking to websites.

Sure they get deleted, but what's to stop them from popping up again?.

Is there any plan to introduce a tighter account creation method?. Or even an IP Ban system?.

There supposed to be Security Measures the Admins can set up around here to stop that kind of thing.

They either haven't gotten to it yet or they don't know about it. I don't know too much myself but I do know it exists.

IP bans would do nothing against spambots. See here's how an IP ban works: the specific IP address sent out at time of account registration is recorded. Now if someone is on a dialup connection their IP address changes each time they connect to the internet. It is also possible to go to another location with WIFI to get a new IP address, just as it is possible to use a proxy to give you a new IP address.

Spambots have constantly changing IP addresses. The only real way to get rid of a good handful of them is to do an AREA IP ban, which would mean no one in that area / town / city would be able to register for the forums.

So IP bans wouldn't really do anything.

As for security measures. There are measures against bots, but a human registering the account would quickly knock out anything that gets put up. Account validation by an admin is also something that could be in place (God I can't remember if it IS in place or not....been so long since registering), but if the bot has a non-obvious account name then it would be approved.

I forget what a friend of mine did on one of the other forums I'm active on to cut down on spambots...I know that the account validation over there can take up to a week for an admin to process you.

Also take into account how many people register here on an average day. It's a little more difficult to put account validation that is a loooong drawn out process into practice as the administration and moderation team here have enough to deal with.

Good point. But I do know there's that word code thing in some Forums that have to be typed in when you Register or among other things that apparently Bots can't do.

Originally Posted by Eylof

The best way to deal with this is to scan the content of posts by new members for anything that looks similar to spam. With enough effort put into it (entering keywords and phrases mostly) it can stop 99% of the bots that get through.

The way we had it set-up was like this: The first 5 posts from any new member was sent through a filter that would scan it for keywords we had entered into a database. If it located any of these keywords the thread was hidden from public view and placed on a list that only the moderators had access to.

This list was checked daily. If the post was spam it was deleted, if it was a legitimate post by a real user it was moved to it's proper location.

Keeping the bots out is an arms race that you'll never win. Controlling them after they get in is relatively easy though. I'm not sure if there is a modification at vB.org that does is. I can however put you in touch with the guy that made this "mod" for us though if anyone is interested.

Though it sounds good it's not my place plus I don't think I'd make a good Mod or whatever it might be your implying. I got a natural sense of laziness in me.

I moderate a vbulletin site and we had a similar flurry of spambots a couple of months ago. Ever since we installed a spam blocker from vbulletin.org we have seen a significant drop. Barely getting one or two per month now.

Originally Posted by Dragonheart1991

The spambots are coming like the horde...

Oooooooh yeah. Three right now I''ve seen and it's getting annoying seeing the bastards everywhere.