PLA Forums
OMG IT'S TEH PLA! => Forum Related Updates, Suggestions and Questions => Topic started by: murd0c on June 13, 2011, 07:18:09 AM
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Hi jerks, I'm trying my best to get rid of the spam that hit us last night. If any of you wants to actually purchase me some tramadol, that would be great because my prescription doesn't refill for another five days and I'm totally out.
EDIT: Hey RBCP, can you throw you some *.in, *.ru, *.pl and *.cn e-mail address bans? I would do it but I don't know how.
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I'm tellin' ya guys, I know you have the captcha verification, but those don't really do anything for protection against the spam bots.. the verification question works a lot better. Its not full-proof, but it does keep a lot more of them out than just the captcha
Eg: "What letter is missing? Let's eat some BB_"
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Yeah, a simple question to register would be great. Like "What frequency does 2600 Hz run on?" I will look into a plugin that does that.
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Yeah, it's not like getting rid of spammers isn't hard. But it'd be cool not to have them at all in the first place.
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I just now implemented a new user password for people that register. The password is 'cactus' and the text next to the form clearly states to enter the word cactus into the form. If our spam is mostly bots, then this should fix the problem. If actual people are creating the accounts that spam us, then they'll probably be smart enough to enter the secret word. If the spam continues I'll make the descriptive text require a little more thought and possibly a Google search. murd0c, let me know if this helps.
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Oh no, it must not be working because some jerk named RSSbot just posted about 50 spams!
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There may also be some bots lurking that haven't posted yet.. they do that sometimes
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seems like most of the spammers / spam bots do not understand the english language very well...
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Eliminating spam isn't that big of a deal, it's just kinda been a thing I've woken up to these past few days. Deleting user, and all posts and threads is less-than-one click. But I'd like to weed out these jeroffs before they get a chance to post. I'll let you know, Brad.
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By the way, thanks murd0c, for deleting so much spam. I don't think I notice what a problem it is because you delete most of it before I see it. I only end up deleting a few per week myself.
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It will probably more time consuming, but does this message board software have a feature that lets you preview and approve the first few messages a newbie makes? i've seen some message boards where the first 5 or 10 messages have to approved by the admin and/or moderator. After that the person can post without approval.
MIB
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Obviously the "type cactus into this box" thing isn't working to get rid of spammers, though I think it has reduced it quite a bit. I've changed it to ask the very simple question of "what kind of phone did Dino use?" with a link to the Dino story. Let's see how well that works.
Any ideas on a good question I could use that would be better than the Dino thing? Something that wouldn't be obvious to the type of person who wants to spam, but might be obvious to people who register here. Like a very basic phreaking question maybe. I hate to put something in there that would exclude noobs.
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Easy. What frequency do you use to gain control over a telephone trunk? 2600. If you don't know those little tidbits about phone phreaking or its broad history, then maybe we don't want them here asking us to call their ex-girlfriends for them or requesting us to get our Mustangs repainted and surfaced and floors cleaned.
Still you could ask how many quick chirps make a quarter tone with a red box. All relatively simple shit. Even then, like you said before about a question that would involving googling, there you go! Even if they don't know either answer, they can always google! Hell, with questions like that guarding the gate the people might think they're getting in with an intellectual crowd.
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what does PLA stand for? - similar question to register @ binrev.. it asks what binrev stands for...
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Brad, more dickheads are spamming our forums. Poland and Russia. Ban these countries entirely! (from the forums, anyway)
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Don't ban them, just have them complete a quiz on PLA to register an account. Anyone who posts spam will have the IP address and email address posted.
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pretty much 100% of forum spam is done by automated bots, with fake email addresses and disposable IPs.. its all done just to get the linked sites ranking higher in search engines, so posting the forum spammer info wouldn't really be much of a threat to them
the best method i've seen so far for spam revenge was the recent carpet cleaning people episode.. although you can report sites for spamming, if you're inclined to do that kind of thing
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Reinstalling the forums took away the "password" to sign up that kept out most of the spammers. I'll try to get that set up again this weekend.
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Murd0c, I set up the "cactus" password thing again for new users. It should fix most of the problem, but let me know if you're still deleting a lot of spam.
I don't want to ban entire countries. I know we don't get many people from those countries, but I'd hate to exclude them if we did.
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Roger that.
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http://www.stopforumspam.com/usage (http://www.stopforumspam.com/usage)
You can use the APIs on this site to automate checking IPs for spam.. they've got a pretty large database going
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cloudflare.com
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cloudflare.com
SPAMMER!