|
Search Tech-Forums - link takes you to our Forum's search page. Note: The following is only a text archive! To view the actual forum discussion, please visit our website at http://www.tech-forums.net Pages:1 Yet another Spam prevention idea(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)Posted by: kfc469 So, today a certain user(toyngr) has posted 12 spam messages withing the last 10 minutes. The new posts section is completely taken up by his posts and I, along with many other people have reported his posts. The problem with this is that there are no mods online, so no action gets taken and the forums keep getting spammed up. So, what if when a person gets 5 or 6 reported posts within a few minutes of each other, he/she gets temporarily banned until a mod comes along and decides to ban ban him/her or unban him/her? Sounds like a good idea to me and it would certainly help our spam problem that we have been having here lately. Posted by: Lonewolf5460 i know something like this has been suggested before i want something to be done also. Posted by: kfc469 the spam here is getting ridiculous. I know the mods are doing all they can, but we need something more. Posted by: Lonewolf5460 maybe more mods are needed Posted by: kfc469 that could help, or some way to make people with just spam killing abilities. I dont really think you could do that, but maybe someone with the ability to only delete single posts, without the ability to ban Posted by: Shumway [COLOR=blue]You can keep throwing out all the suggestion's you want but nothing's going to get done around here.[/COLOR] ;) Posted by: Lonewolf5460 i know how many threads have been made and how many changes have been made towards spam deletion. Posted by: Trotter There have been over 100 bannings in the past week alone. How many more do you want? I work nights. I'm on TF before I go to work, as soon as I get home from work (usually for an hour or two), plus I'm on when I can while at work (during breaks). Most of the time I get on at work is spent banning spammers (which sucks, as I don't have my bookmarks at work and have to do it all longhand). And that's just the time's I'm on. While some may think the mod team is sitting on their collective duffs, we are actually working like crazy to keep TF cleaned up. Just because you don't see the action doesn't mean it's not happening. Posted by: baronvongogo I agree that mods have lives etc but something else needs to be done to stop this spamming, could it be due to a disgruntled ex member doing some of it? because its out of hand now worse than ever before with 1 person doing 10 to 15 posts of spam in different topics. Posted by: kfc469 [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Trotter [/i] [B]While some may think the mod team is sitting on their collective duffs, we are actually working like crazy to keep TF cleaned up. Just because you don't see the action doesn't mean it's not happening. [/B][/QUOTE] I wasn't saying that at all, in fact, I said that I knew the mod team was doing everything they could. I just think that you guys can't handle all of the spam that has started comming in so I was just trying to help you guys out. Posted by: Trotter TF has become the target of at least one spambot. Possibly several. We are working on blocking the access of the bots. Posted by: Shumway Yeah those spambot's are a real pain to get rid of,It took forever to get rid of them attacking an old forum i used to go to. Posted by: Trotter DMo is contacting at least one ISP. We're also looking at blocking/banning some IPs/domains. Posted by: The General Haha, if it were like that, then Ryan would have been banned soooo long before he actually did. Same with talldude123. Hey, speaking of talldude123, he'll be back tomorrow, won't he? :confused: But yeah, the spam is out of control: [img]http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/3277/spam1te3.jpg[/img] [img]http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9866/spam2xj5.jpg[/img] One other thing I wonder, is why do we keep the emptied spam threads? Why not just delete them? What purpose does it serve to leave threads where a spammer gets banned and what not? My idea: Perhaps if there was a way to "rate" posts or threads as good or bad, and based on the number of goods or bads, it would get hidden or unhidden, that would be excellent for both spam, and n00bs. Posted by: DMo224 I know that I sound like a broken record, but this version of vB does not support that idea of bad thread ratings that would keep a person from posting. I don't even think the newest version has that, but it's something that we keep trying to deal with in better ways. So your suggestions are appreciated. Some might say that nothing will get done around here, but I say that alot of members don't know what's going on that they don't see. And you can start a forum and say you don't have that problem, but when that forum has several thousand members, then you'll see those problems. I've been involved with several forums, some small, some large, and the small ones are easy to take care of since the spammers are looking for thousands to see their spam, not a hundred. Anyway, we're trying to make things better. Your suggestions and constructive criticisms are noted and may help in the future. The thread rating idea is another good one, and so is reputation that we've talked about in the past. I'm hoping that we'll be able to implement those in the future. We keep alot of the threads (though closed) so that when an ISP contacts me about those that are spamming, I still have the proof. There are no soft-deletes here, so when we delete it, it's gone. Technically it's only gone when the database is backed up. There have been several ISPs that have been contacted about members that have been banned, especially multiple times. We have the burden of proof, so we keep their PMs and posts and send it to the ISP with a harassment charge. Even at that, it takes time for them to act upon the problem. Banning IPs is another option that we do when the IP is static. Banning a dynamic IP, or a range, keeps alot of people from being able to join. I get several emails a day that are about this issue: new members trying to join and it tells them they are already banned. And you wouldn't believe the number of spam emails that the admin account gets! We've also blocked some emails so that they won't be considered valid if someone tries to join with that email (the @stupid.com type stuff). I can't name those here, but some are not accepted because the spammers use some of these to join. So, we are trying and IMO, we are doing a better job than ever. But the system can always be better, and that's what we're striving for. I hope that helps with understanding that we are trying to make this place better. Dave :D Posted by: Nickolas I'm a phpbb forum admin and I had too many problems deleting garbage posted by spammers. So, I went [url=http://www.phpbbhacks.com] here [/url] and write spam in the search text box. Found some hacks that could prevent a spammer bot to login, but the best is one that asks one of random five questions that only a human can reply. So, the bot spammers disapeared from my forum. You can try a solution like that. Posted by: Trotter Thanks, Nickolas, but we're running an old creaking version of vB. But maybe DMo (the admin) can find a hack or two for that. Hmmm... Hey, Dave! Have you looked here: [url]http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showmods.php[/url] Posted by: The General Yeah, when you register here, there isn't even a little image garbled text to decipher, you just type in your username and password you want and thats it. There should at least be an image thing, but the 5 questions thing sounds even better! Posted by: HAVOC Man, i'm not looking forward to this at ToVFORUMS. We are using PHPBB so we can implement some of the things mentioned. Plus, we have an uber leet hacker at our helm. So, that could make things better. Posted by: Nubius Larry needs to put aside some of the google ads and stupid spam links in the paragraphs money and upgrade vB. If vB was upgraded, it seems like it'd sure open a lot of doors for you guys in terms of having options to do something about this place be it spammers, spam-bots, and the look of TF. Things would be easier to get done with the upgraded templates and you'd overall just have more options. Seems like you're just fighting a pointless and never ending battle trying to ban them at your current state. Getting vB updated and getting things like the image or 5 questions would probably help you out greatly. Posted by: DMo224 Yeah, Trotter, I check out the vB org alot. There is an old hack (for the old version) for spambots that has a very dynamic and server intensive system to check for flooding by spambots. It depends on whether you only check threads, or threads and posts, on whether it runs one query or two queries on every page of the forum. A really intensive check could shutdown the server. Nubius, I agree that we need the upgrade for more than just this matter. I'm working on it! Dave :D Posted by: Shumway HAHAHAHA!!!!! A spam prevention thread and your getting spammed in it HAHAHAHA!!!! Better start doing something soon boy's ;) :p :p :p :p Posted by: Trotter They're spambots, and I think they look for keywords. I guess spam is one of 'em. Posted by: kfc469 yeah, and its happened more than once in this thread. Posted by: talldude123 What you need to do is have a e-mail activation thing, or something where a moderator has to personally e-mail the member to get to know them, before they can access the forum. If it's a spambot, they'll obviously say stuff like "free porn", where a normal person would say Hi. Posted by: Shumway I know there's something in the work's right now to fight this but i just had to laugh ;) Posted by: willsko87 This really is getting crazy. Pages of threads with spam. We appreciate the feedback Dave, and hopefully you guys can work something out to fix this problem. I just hope that we aren't losing too many current and potential members out of this, not that it is really an issue. Posted by: Tenpoenceter55 [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/apokalipse/F-22-1.gif[/img] oh, the irony of the thread he posted in. Posted by: talldude123 We really need more moderators, or the current ones online more. This place is a nuthouse lately. Posted by: Shumway There's more than enough mod's,It's just the old version of vb that we need to address,If that don't get updated there's no sense of keeping this forum around,It will become even more infected and will **** everyone off and they will just give up trying to fix the mess,Have a feeling we will see something done in the next couple week's hopefully ;) Posted by: talldude123 Well, we don't have much time left. Soon they will run this forum :p Then TF2...it's going to be crazy unless we get this updated. An idea is to have some kind of e-mail validation or activation when you enter this forum, or just not let certain members in. vBulletin Copyright ©2000 - 2003, Jelsoft Enterprises Limited. PPC Management vB Easy Archive Final - Created by Xenon |