TAoM Invasion of the Spambots

[Jonathan Green]

I got one this morning, but deleted.

[PrinceAlarming]

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!!

I had 3 spam messages; one from WilliamLucky

DB8C2E09-F900-4DC2-899D-07DA2E2F0E72.jpeg (133.17 KiB) Viewed 6750 times

[BBP]

Saw those two as well.

Again: this may be getting repetitive but I have friends who clicked on links like the ones in that e-mail. One lost use of that computer, it was completely gone. The other had gotten some ransomware on it and was lucky his brother-in-law still had all his children's baby pictures.

Do not click on any link posted by them!!

[BBP]

You know that feeling when you get back from vacation and the first few days of work you're basically cleaning up all the work that was left on the shelf while you were away?

Well that's how I feel. Log on, over 168 messages and one angry PM in my inbox just because I went away to Dortmund for a concert. I soft-deleted everything then checked if I had anything in it that should be kept (there was) and spent half an hour that I'll never get back just deleting that stuff. Geez.

Should it happen again - try not to post - any post made during a spamming spree has a chance of being overlooked by yours truly and be lost forever.

[coinilius]

Thanks for the hard work, BBP - sorry to hear you had an angry pm waiting for you as well, on top of all this spam nonsense to sort out

[MajorHoy]

. . . and one angry PM in my inbox . . .

If that was mine, it wasn't angry. Just concerned because there was that one SPAMMER who was clogging up the board with multiple single-post SPAM threads spread over several pages. That made it difficult to find actual legitimate new postings, plus could be very discouraging for newer members.
And while everyone deserves a life outside of the system, do we maybe need a few other people who can mind the store when the current people are unavailable for whatever reason?

[BBP]

I'm happy enough I volunteered for Michael to do this before he disappeared. It shouldn't be necessary at all - with a better captcha system (like a sorting puzzle) it should be manageable to keep them all out. It's no good deleting them after they posted if they keep getting in. This is a stop-gap solution that got out of hand by now for as far as I'm concerned, there are times when I think "to h-e-l-l with all of this" but as you can see the second I leave the second this forum might die. It's hard work that requires a lot of devotion to get in every day, again deleting the same hot sexy galleries posts, seeing over 60 pages of spammers in the member list that need to be thrown away but I can't because I'm an admin...

This is not the solution and the only way to get a working one is if Michael or Tum installs a different way to stop the spammers from getting in.

Next time I may ask my boyfriend to check up.

[MajorHoy]

I'm happy enough I volunteered for Michael to do this before he disappeared. It shouldn't be necessary at all - with a better captcha system (like a sorting puzzle) it should be manageable to keep them all out. It's no good deleting them after they posted if they keep getting in. This is a stop-gap solution that got out of hand by now for as far as I'm concerned, there are times when I think "to h-e-l-l with all of this" but as you can see the second I leave the second this forum might die. It's hard work that requires a lot of devotion to get in every day, again deleting the same hot sexy galleries posts, seeing over 60 pages of spammers in the member list that need to be thrown away but I can't because I'm an admin...

This is not the solution and the only way to get a working one is if Michael or Tum installs a different way to stop the spammers from getting in.

Can this system be set so that new members need approvals to post messages for their first few postings? I know that would also require some work, but it might be an easier way to weed out SPAMMERS before their multiple posts become a major nuisance.

[BBP]

Michael would have to do that. I can't do anything about spam coming in.

[MajorHoy]

It's a bit frustrating when you look to see "Who is online" and the results show "There are 5 registered users and 0 hidden users online", but of those five registered users (besides myself) we have:
* bertiemy11
* Bing [Bot]
* Google [Bot]
* MSN [Bot]
and "bertiemy11" appears to be an active SPAM-bot. = sigh =

[BBP]

Or when you see 22 users have a birthday and they're all spam accounts.

[MajorHoy]

Or when you see 22 users have a birthday and they're all spam accounts.

I wonder how SPAMMERS/SPAM-bots celebrate their birthdays?

Do they receive SPAM-birthday cards?

[Zoo977]

So this may be a really stupid suggestion
But a long time back, a website I frequented was just PLAGUED with spambots, and what the mods eventually did was shut down all new user sign ups while they figured out how to put anti-bot protections in place
Not sure how possible that is here but that worked for them

[BBP]

I can't do that.

My actions are limited to:
-locking, editing and deleting posts and topics. Also cosmetic stuff like stickying, merging and splitting.
-banning members (User name and IP)

I cannot delete members and, as I mentioned, there is no way of preventing the spammers from coming in short of banning whole IP groups. Since that is useless because spammers use fake IPs all the time (and blocking them could prevent bonafide users from getting in) I have no possible way of blocking spammers from coming in.

Unless I check every five minutes to try to ban them before they post.

[Michael]

Well, I've gone in and deleted about 30k spam users and brought our members back down to under 500. I updated the registration question, so hopefully that will curb new registrants. We'll see! Big thanks, of course, to BBP who's really kept this place going!

[BBP]

30 thousand!!

Thank you very much for deleting them!

[Michael]

There were probably a few legitimate members in there too, but they had zero posts, so who knows...

[Elrond]

Awesome! Hopefully this helps!!! Thanks so much!!!!

[BBP]

They're like weeds, aren't they? Just can't get rid of 'em.

I've at times had trouble seeing if somebody is a spammer or a legitimate poster - just managed to delete one that had posted in someone's topic two years ago and that had gone under the radar. Let's see what else I find here...

(digs)

[MajorHoy]

I think people without any posts but who also have a "beep" in their location/website may also be . . . questionable (if they weren't already shown the door).