TAoM Invasion of the Spambots

[BBP]

Haven't heard from Michael in the past half year of trying to get his attention... sigh.

[Murder by Death]

You should enter one of his contests on YouTube! LOL

[BBP]

Quite an increase in spammers the past few days.

There's another 150 topics I just deleted. Weirdly the interface gave me trouble - I soft-deleted the first 99 without a problem, then I deleted the others but it turned out they hadn;t been deleted.

I'm less and less enamoured with the PHPBB software.

[LeonardoMyst]

I wouldn't be surprised if TAOM is being targeted because someone wants the domain name.

[BBP]

No, there are just a couple of spambots that search for PHPBB forums and automatically post. If you have a PHPBB forum you will suffer spam, no matter how big or small. Most of it is phishing, clicking a link will give you a virus or ransomware.

[Jamie]

Is 5 and a half pages a record?

[BBP]

No I think the records were first made before I asked Michael to help out with the spam. One spammer created 17 pages back then.
As you may have noticed I was out of town for a day - Saturday morning I checked the forum, on Saturday I met some friends and travelled all the way up north to my boyfriend, where we had a family outing on Sunday and that was so exhausting I didn't have time till Monday morning to chuck spam.

As said I have no way to prevent the spammers from coming in as a moderator. I soft-deleted everything and am checking if there's anything worth keeping - which is good since this topic was almost in the throw-away pile.

[BBP]

The forum got overrun again... sorry, real world got in the way.

I deleted over 200 topics - because of two bulk spammers there was no proper forum in sight. To try to prevent any further deletion of proper topics I'll leave them in the forum trash can before deleting them altogether.

This means, however, that this topic is a bench mark. The soft-deleted topics don't show up to you, but they do show up to the admins and mod - making this forum tough to read.

I've just set this topic to "lock" to I know to what point all the topics are deleted. If you miss any topic, send me a PM!

[BBP]

And, hey presto, unlock!

[BBP]

I'm not sure if I can handle the current wave of spammers - bots all have their unique behavioral patterns programmed. Most just post in Topic 1 a single topic but there have been at least 5 today that posted over 50 topics in multiple forums. I can only try to limit the damage by deleting the posts and banning the account. The spammers then still show up in the member list and the harmful links they often have are still there to be clicked.

Also with this many posts, the chance of me accidentally chucking a proper topic increases. I've currently soft-deleted about 200 spam topics and will check the trash can.

How can we finally get Michael in to help out?

[BBP]

"So BBP, how did you spend your extra hour?"

"I deleted some 2000 spam posts on my forum..."

[cacums]

I'm so sorry you have to deal with that

Twas 17 pages of spammy nonsense. Thanks for taking out the trash! It might feel unappreciated, but it is always a relief to come back to a clean forum. <3

[coinilius]

Yes thank you for the time and effort to go through and delete all that/block all those accounts - the work is appreciated!

[BBP]

It;s been over a year since Michael was last active on this forum...

[BBP]

Pfff... went away to BF for the weekend and got a bit of a shock coming back - I found that there was not just quite some spam, but there was one that updated two old topics with pornographic photos.

Note to self - delete browsing history. I hope I can unsee this...

[cacums]

Raw and spooky.

[Jonathan Green]

Pfff... went away to BF for the weekend and got a bit of a shock coming back - I found that there was not just quite some spam, but there was one that updated two old topics with pornographic photos.

Note to self - delete browsing history. I hope I can unsee this...

I pity you dearly BBP.

[BBP]

Attention please:

A very vile type of spammer has taken to replying to topics. You can easily recognize some of them since they put a small picture as attachment.
If you see them:

PLEASE DON'T CLICK THE ATTACHMENT!

FLAG THE POST!

[BBP]

Another spammer going by the name of WilliamLyly (or something similar) has just sent out PMs, possibly to each and every one of you.
Do not open the e-mail and throw it away immediately!!

[coinilius]

I didn't get a PM but thanks for the heads up - will keep an eye on anything that comes through.