Trying To Fight Spammers

Post by **Tachyon** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:13 pm

I've been spending a lot of time lately trying to keep spammers off of this message board. It's a real challenge. In order to see if someone is a spammer or not I sometimes visit their Web site links. This has opened me up to some severe virus attacks.

I hope you guys aren't getting pulled into bad sites by the spammers. The fight will continue like this until the new version 3 of this message board software is released. At that time I will take advantage of new features and spend time carefully setting things up to help prevent spammers.

KOG · Post by **KOG** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 4:06 pm

Well, when I see someone posting up links to websites featuring 'cheap medication' on the modeling board, I feel pretty sure it's spam and so I avoid clicking.

Post by **Tachyon** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:54 pm

I check the URL's people post in their profiles. Some are not at all obvious so I sometimes click on them to see what I'm dealing with.

kosh · Post by **kosh** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 11:02 pm

I try to check the new members by going to their listed homepages and forward the odd ones on to you, tachyon. I haven't been hit with virii though, Avast antivirus seems to do a good job for me.

Wingnut · Post by **Wingnut** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 7:35 am

Yes, people if it looks funny, DON'T CLICK ON IT! Tell a mod or Tachyon and let them erase the member from the forum.
Over at the MAHQ.net forums we had a thread set up just to ID the spammer accounts. It went 4 pages before we got all caught up and managed to rid ourselves of the back log of them. We still get some new ones that come in, but we keep a close eye on the urls listed under the profiles and if it is funky, the account is erased from the database.
We have had everything from perscription drug add of all kinds to porn and dateing sites, and perhaps most amuseingly a couple sites for GreenPease.

kosh · Post by **kosh** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 12:27 pm

I would delete them when I find them, but I don't have that capability when I'm logged in.

Wingnut · Post by **Wingnut** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 10:29 pm

kosh wrote:I would delete them when I find them, but I don't have that capability when I'm logged in.

Indeed. Only Admins have that level of power to delete accounts, and even then from what Chris tells me they have to be taken down one at a time, no mass deleteions.

Temjin · Post by **Temjin** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:04 pm

Tachyon, if you do a google search on the content of the post, sometimes you can find out if it's spam or not.

Like do a google search on:

"can you help me whith .httpaccess... "

"Anybody can recomend me websites to purchase powerful program for SEO, Google Page Rank"

Kuruni · Post by **Kuruni** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:22 pm

It's kind of sad that the new guy is spammer

. I don't click his link yet, but fact that he post it randonly is obvious.

Kuruni · Post by **Kuruni** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 4:27 am

Yet another two...

(though I believe they're actually same person with two accounts)
http://www.gearsonline.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1624

Zoxesyr · Post by **Zoxesyr** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 3:18 am

it seems like a question about Gundam or FSS would be a first level filter.

It would have to be something that isn't obvious from the wikipedia or other pro sites, and something that a human would have to answer.

I think it is actually sadder that this new guy doesn't think we see his posts as spam. I mean REALLY, a shakira porn post in the middle of an RPG discussion is so obvious that it is comical.

Wingnut · Post by **Wingnut** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 4:48 am

Got another one posting porn here. Ban it, log the IP and block that too.

Post by **Tachyon** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 7:07 am

I placed a visual recognition system in the message board sign up a few months ago. We still get spammers but I think they are real people and not AI's. The current situation is annoying. The FSS forum is the favorite target.

The software we use here for the message board will be updated soon. The new version is already in beta 3. If the new version doesn't fix things better (or take too long to come out) I'll look around for a custom fix. I've put a few custom fixes into this message board already.

In the mean time, I thank everyone for their patience. Complaints and comments can be sent to me. I'll read them and take them seriously. There's no need to worry about hurting my feelings.

Falk · Post by **Falk** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 9:58 pm

Ahoy !

I recently discovered on another message board that there's a word censor that helps stopping spam.
In fact most censor change a wrong word to a nicer one automatically.
This one asks you to change the word yourself and won't post the message as long as it's not crrectly edited.

So everything unwanted is blocked as the spam bot won't think of another word... I guess you can then add some new words if some spam breaks through anyway (new drug name, casino or placement crap...). As long as drugs are not named after mortarheadds' names, we should be fine

You may want to look for this censor, or I can ask the said messageboard what's its name.

Post by **Tachyon** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 10:35 pm

It certainly sounds interesting. I'll have to look into that.