spam

[raven]

There has been alot of spam lately on the fourms, anything we can do to get rid of it?

The latest "sex toy" spam made me laugh. Its kinda getting annoying.

[seppuku]

There has been alot of spam lately on the fourms, anything we can do to get rid of it?

The latest "sex toy" spam made me laugh. Its kinda getting annoying.
I think Ghostbear already does a lot behind the scenes to thwart spammers before they can strike. If people continue to Report the offending the threads, the moderators will continue to clean up the scum that slips through.

[Texx]

Anything done about spam is really only reactionary. The only proactive measure I could think of would be setting the forums software to require the admin to approve each new account. This is not always possible, depending upon the version of site software being used.

[DKruse]

That would also mean that ghostbear would have to sit there and view multiple requests each day, and spambots sometimes get clever enough to use semi-possible usernames.

Ghostbear has gone through the following steps (that I know for sure):
-Banned whole IPs (thousands upon thousands), that are generally used by the bot servers and spammers. This is the primary system of banning he uses for them.
-Banned email addresses that are generally used by spam bots and servers.
-Banned usernames that spam bots and servers generally use (this is the least he probably uses though, since the usernames are sometimes randomly chosen).



There really will never be any easy, completely safe way to prevent spam though.

[Agent J]

Correct. I personally give GB a xen pat-on-the-back everytime I see a spammer, because I know that it's one of maybe a dozen, maybe more that never get in.

[Ghostbear]

Thanks guys. :)

And your right on some of the steps.

The other step is to keep the ID's active, but put them into a non-entity usergroup. So, the 'bot can log in but cant do anything. Most bots dont have a contingent to handle that. They just say that they have a valid ID so they dont make more of them.

Anyway, I am not so sure that there is a way to stop them all. As some of the mods get up in ability, I am looking into seeing if I can add them to be able to modify the usergroup of users so they can move people into the non-entity as well. but that I dont think is available in this version of forums. I do think it is available in the latest though.

[Rattler]

I do not have experience with this software of boards but I know most boards allow you to have an "anti-spam" box in the registration, it shows a picture that has to be copied by a person into a text box, that stops all spam on my forums....

[raven]

Thats a very interesting idea. When I moderated my old americas army forum, we had that text box thing too. The only problem was that it was HIGHLY annoying, especially if you post alot.

My solution was to make that text box go away after 50 posts. Im not sure if you can apply it to these forums however.

[Peally]

In my experience as long as you have it required for registration it should halt spam-bots altogether unless they are manually being typed up, which is exremely rare. Having it for posting each time is pointless if they can bypass it in the first place. For posts not to be spammed you can have the classic timer before posting again. That way someone would have to wait 30 seconds or more after posting to do it again. Also having guest forum visitors turned off is nice, but I don't think it would work in this sort of forum situation. I've yet to have a single spammer in the America's Army forum I help run and moderate using a few simple security measures like these (in addition to hunting down IPs and such).

Also, banning MAC addresses helps too, but I've never implimented that in a forum. That way they can't change the IP of one computer or server and have it bypass IP bans. Changing your IP address really isn't hard and is streamlined with some routers and such that have it as a feature. If a MAC address was banned it would ban the computer, not just the particular address. That way they would need to re-install components and operating systems for them to get past a ban.

My two cents ;).