What is up with all the SPAM bots and postings?

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Karagin
08/30/09 11:44 AM
72.178.75.99

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So why are we all of a sudden this target for SPAMMERs?
Karagin

Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
CrayModerator
08/30/09 01:50 PM
173.168.115.68

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It's happening on many forums. On BTechUnits.com, for example, approximately 30 spambots a day apply for accounts (about once a week I go in and clear out 200-240 spambots waiting for approval). The one or two that get through the filters daily at Sarna.net are probably a fraction of the flood hitting this website.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Nic JansmaAdministrator
09/07/09 09:53 PM
76.121.181.201

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Unfortunately a lot of the spam postings/users I've seen lately are actual people doing the spamming, not automated bots. I believe this is the case due to the time it takes them to create a user, login, and post messages from the access logs.

Any ideas how to reduce it?
-- NicJ
Karagin
09/07/09 10:46 PM
72.178.75.99

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I have one, some of the sites out there, both normal every day site and the more adult ones have the box where you have to put an alpha numeric answer set or a type in a series of words where the letters of either are both upper and lower case or a number is mixed in.

This seems to stump the bots and sometimes stumps the folks trying to setup an account. That is a draw back for the legitimate folks trying to join, but it should or could cut down on the spammers.
Karagin

Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
CrayModerator
09/08/09 08:19 AM
147.160.136.10

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Quote:

Unfortunately a lot of the spam postings/users I've seen lately are actual people doing the spamming, not automated bots. I believe this is the case due to the time it takes them to create a user, login, and post messages from the access logs.




I do not think they are real users. They consistently use automatically generated handles (especially those with two capital letters in their names, like XDJohn and SusanWL), garbage email addresses, and show automated-type posting behaviors that zoom in on the same thread time after time (like the Long Tom Bastard thread, which seems to be a spam magnet.)

Quote:

Any ideas how to reduce it?




Manual approval of new users.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Nic JansmaAdministrator
09/12/09 06:55 PM
76.121.181.201

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Cray and I have been talking about this problem lately and we've come up with some ideas to reduce the amount of this SPAM. I've added a CAPTCHA to the new user registration process and blocked emails from @*.ru domains (over 75% of the SPAM registrations).

We've also enabled manual approval for new users. If the Captcha and .ru blocks work enough, we might be able to turn off manual approval for new users.
-- NicJ
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