Spam spam spam

questions, corrections, complaints, suggestions

Postby Sander » Sat Sep 30, 2006 10:55 pm

From Welcome:
spambot-spotter wrote:Can profile-spambots like SwingSwing be banned directly after one posting? Or are they kept open for test reasons?
According to the User list, only profile tramq0193 has been banned so far. Why was that?

No mercy for spambots!

spambot-spotter wrote:Are these spambots? As with profile tramq0193's posting, their postings are removed:

abalysan
Posts: 1 - Show all posts
There are no posts by this user in this forum.

KellyTeenz
Posts: 1 - Show all posts
There are no posts by this user in this forum.

Thanks for noticing that! I'm not sure if banning the spammers really helps, as it seems that they only post once and then register a new account again, most likely with another IP address.

I still have to find a solution that can really prevent spam. Most of the easy solutions don't seem to work, so probably we'll have to use something like Captcha. I will look into that later, but for now I'll just have to remove the spam manually.

I'm sorry if the spam, that might survive sometimes for a few days, is causing any inconvenience.

*EDIT* boardlinking updated to McDrake
Last edited by Sander on Sat Feb 10, 2007 3:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
Sander
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Postby Flintheart Glomgold » Wed Nov 15, 2006 6:45 pm

By the looks of it, this board is geting attacked by Spambots and it seems to happen more and more often.
Maybe you should consider updating your Mesage Board's software and/or activate captchas for Guest-Postings and Registration. I think, this could prevent you a lot of trouble.
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Postby Sander » Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:31 pm

Ah, captcha's! I've written so much about them, that I almost forgot that I could try installing them.
I have tried using Bad Behavior on the Dutch forums, but that sometimes also blocks real humans.
But captcha's... Thanks for reminding me! When I've got the time for it, I'll see what I can do. You're right that there is too much spam these days on the forums.
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Postby Daniel73 » Thu Nov 16, 2006 3:41 pm

Sander wrote:Ah, captcha's! I've written so much about them, that I almost forgot that I could try installing them.
I have tried using Bad Behavior on the Dutch forums, but that sometimes also blocks real humans.
But captcha's... Thanks for reminding me! When I've got the time for it, I'll see what I can do. You're right that there is too much spam these days on the forums.

Do we have an address for banned real people? If they're banned they can't comment on the forum.

A lot of spam messages contain the same text or keywords. Can that be of help when filtering spam? It would at least help to keep the 18+ spam away.
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Postby CAPTCHA » Mon Dec 18, 2006 9:16 pm

A CAPTCHA (an initialism for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human. The term was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper of Carnegie Mellon University, and John Langford of IBM. A common type of CAPTCHA requires that the user type the letters of a distorted image, sometimes with the addition of an obscured sequence of letters or digits that appears on the screen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA
 

Postby Daniel73 » Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:33 pm

Since 17 March 2007, in an emergency due to an unbearable amount of (mainly sexual explicit) spam posted on the board, by not having any spamfilters available for guests, the open guest-option has been turned off to read-only.
Hopefully this is temporary.

As a result, guests cannot contribute without registering. And members may have problems logging in, depending on their software.
In case people have problems reaching the board, they can contact me (the maintainer) at e-mail address: dve@[...].nl

*EDIT*: e-mail address removed. new e-mail address: admin@mcdrake.nl
Last edited by Daniel73 on Fri Aug 17, 2007 12:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Robb_K » Sun Apr 15, 2007 10:11 pm

Thanks for keeping out the spam. I don't mind having all the "guests" having to register, and not having members being allowed to have "guest" alteregos. I hope it has to stay this way. Now if spammers could only force us to have an edit function.......
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Postby Daniel73 » Sun Apr 15, 2007 11:45 pm

Robb_K wrote:I don't mind having all the "guests" having to register, and not having members being allowed to have "guest" alteregos. I hope it has to stay this way.

Visitors (guests and members) are allowed to use alteregos, as always. Visitors can just register multiple profiles. Visitors can just have multiple names. And principally there's no way for me to control that anyhow.

Registering means remembering yet-another name/password-combination. Certainly on McDuck, authors and editors have contributed as guests. Why prevent that?
This has nothing to do with spambots misusing the guests-option unfiltered. The only reason for turning off the guests-option is that it's the only way to shut down floods of spambots at this moment. Spambots can also register, so it can be just a matter of time before spambots will start to flood the board as "members".

Hopefully this emercency situation of turning off the guests-option will be temporary. However, I have limited knowledge about optional software for PunBB.
I hope that it will be possible to install some "CAPTCHA"-option for guests. In such a situation, guests would need to fill in a code to prove they're no spambots. I guess such a solution would filter out most spambot-software, without guests having to first register to give a comment. Is it possible?
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Postby Daniel73 » Sun Apr 15, 2007 11:56 pm

Daniel73 wrote:I hope that it will be possible to install some "CAPTCHA"-option for guests. In such a situation, guests would need to fill in a code to prove they're no spambots.

That code is given as a picture. The trick with "CAPTCHA" is that spambots have difficulties recognizing words that the human eyes still can interpret. For each sending a picture is given with a random, warped code that has to be typed over as temporary password to get through. That way there's no need be obliged to remember a name/password-combination for next visits.
I've seen a board using "CAPTCHA", but I don't know the technical details of how that is done.
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