Forum Rules - Formats - Spotlights  -  Home - Library - New Additions

Potential spambots

Bry89Bry89
edited November 2015 in Site Issues
Recently, I have noticed a large amount of new members that have signed up and from what I see judging by their names - they're spambots, as proven by StopForumSpam upon looking them up. Now, I know every member is in the "Probationary" group but yesterday, I saw one of these spambots in action which was BThommel, where I filed a reported about it after seeing it posting utter garbage around the News & Announcements section, and was then deleted and probably IP banned as a result. Now while the others haven't posted anything yet, there could be a chance for them to strike and you'll never know.

I highly recommend that this forum should have a StopForumSpam plugin which can be used for the software it's on and probably email verification too, which I noticed it didn't have when I signed up here months ago. I feel it's needed in case the forum faces more spam attacks in the future whether small or great. Even if the forum isn't that active much, I still think it's a good idea for this in the long term.

Comments

  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    Yea, there have been quite a few spam postings the last few days. It looks like stich and duff have been deleting the spam users as they post, I just zapped a few myself. Although the topics usually seem to go in to the moderation que, the topic names show up on the front page.
  • garirrygarirry
    XDibxnI.png
    Yeah, this pretty much confirms it.

    EDIT: Also, I noticed most of these profiles have filled out all contact forms (AIM, YIM, etc.) as well as personal info forms (interests, occupation) with random generic stuff. They also advertise a website, and I believe one of them even has that in their signature.
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    What you can't see is most of them registered using mail.ru addresses, so I've added that to the ban list for the moment... but just watch them come back from somewhere else.
  • stitchstitch
    The sortables CAPTCHA we had was really good at solving this problem. It really just required someone to take a few moments to install it again.

    I have not had such moments
  • thiekusthiekus
    Yap, i hate captcha. But is good enough for a while to prevent russian attacker :mrgreen:
  • garirrygarirry
    thiekus wrote:
    Yap, i hate captcha. But is good enough for a while to prevent russian attacker :mrgreen:
    There are these new captcha thingies that you only click on a box and it verifies you to see whether you're a spammer or not (not sure how it does that, but whatever)
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    garirry wrote:
    thiekus wrote:
    Yap, i hate captcha. But is good enough for a while to prevent russian attacker :mrgreen:
    There are these new captcha thingies that you only click on a box and it verifies you to see whether you're a spammer or not (not sure how it does that, but whatever)

    It's Google performing analysis on your behavior / interactions with CAPTCHAs. If their engine determines you're probably a human, it will preset a simple check box. But if it's not sure, it will present a more complicated puzzle for you to solve.

    You can read more about it here: https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.c ... ptcha.html
  • garirrygarirry
    BlueSun wrote:
    garirry wrote:
    thiekus wrote:
    Yap, i hate captcha. But is good enough for a while to prevent russian attacker :mrgreen:
    There are these new captcha thingies that you only click on a box and it verifies you to see whether you're a spammer or not (not sure how it does that, but whatever)

    It's Google performing analysis on your behavior / interactions with CAPTCHAs. If their engine determines you're probably a human, it will preset a simple check box. But if it's not sure, it will present a more complicated puzzle for you to solve.

    You can read more about it here: https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.c ... ptcha.html
    Interesting, didn't know it was Google that made this. Thanks.
  • Bry89Bry89
    garirry wrote:
    Also, I noticed most of these profiles have filled out all contact forms (AIM, YIM, etc.) as well as personal info forms (interests, occupation) with random generic stuff. They also advertise a website, and I believe one of them even has that in their signature.
    I noticed that too, but I get the feeling that the websites they post look rather suspicious. Except one that was just of a random Facebook page...
  • emmanualemmanual
    I have seen a lot spam post over past couple days
  • po lupo lu
    garirry wrote:
    BlueSun wrote:
    garirry wrote:
    thiekus wrote:
    Yap, i hate captcha. But is good enough for a while to prevent russian attacker :mrgreen:
    There are these new captcha thingies that you only click on a box and it verifies you to see whether you're a spammer or not (not sure how it does that, but whatever)

    It's Google performing analysis on your behavior / interactions with CAPTCHAs. If their engine determines you're probably a human, it will preset a simple check box. But if it's not sure, it will present a more complicated puzzle for you to solve.

    You can read more about it here: https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.c ... ptcha.html
    Interesting, didn't know it was Google that made this. Thanks.
    Everything is High-Tech these days!
    Well done, Google! :P :P
    ps. I hate spam anyway. :))))
  • yourepicfailureyourepicfailure
    Everything is so high tech... I agree.
    Especially when I'm clearly living in Europe and received I get those recaptchas or confident technologies or whatever in Japanese.

    Luckily most are rendered images, so there is no hope of me translating the damn thing to complete the check. However, most sites who use somebody else's captchca code don't even link the pass/fail result to anything, so I just click submit and continue on. Or disable scripts for that page and hope the site doesn't rant about no javascript.

    Stripped this one from a Confident Tech 30 seconds ago. At least some of theirs use text instead of an image.
    "犬に関連する次の中から画像を選択してください。"
    What? Or how about continuously getting unreadable captchcas, or when it won't load at all.
    WFM1Et.png
  • DuffDuff
    Sortables is now reinstalled, this should end the influx of spambots.
  • po lupo lu
    Duff wrote:
    Sortables is now reinstalled, this should end the influx of spambots.
    Thanks, I hate spam! P.S. Are you thinking about using google's captcha to replace the sortables? Or are you keeping it like it is now because it contains "|abandonware|not abandonware|? I hope not because the sortables have an history!
    |Windows 7|
    blah blah blah............ |
    Thanks, Po
  • stitchstitch
    We're not using Google anything.

    Since this problem is now resolved...
    folder_lock.gif
This discussion has been closed.