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PostPosted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 11:01 pm 
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viewforum.php?f=615
spam everyday there. Somebody hacked that forum.
It looks like a bot is sending spam everyday.
Add a captcha like tool before posting question, that can stop a bot.

@administrator,
Take some quick action. Fixing manually spam everyday is not a good solution. Stop that spam bot permanently.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 12:20 am 
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Do you report any spam posts you see?

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:40 am 
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mandville wrote:
Do you report any spam posts you see?

What do you mean?
It is impossible to report for any post individually because that was a bot posting new topics 100 or even 1000 posts at once.
I just noticed spam posts there, and notified the form administrator.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 10:00 am 
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if you report one or two of the posts for each bot user name then the board moderators will see it flagged and be more prompted to deal with it.
i doubt very much the forum is hacked.
also remember that spam is bounced as soon as its caught and not every moderator is on all the time.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 10:04 am 
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to add... if the bot can break the forum registration captcha, they can usually break the post captcha.
my suggestion to the best way to cut down the main bot spam we see on this forum is to stop all American sports broadcasting.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 10:11 am 
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Spam is a problem on most forums.

I'm sure the admins do the best they can but when you have someone spamming multiple sub-forums it could be a nightmare to control.

Think we had over 20 spams yesterday and probably similar this morning.

Mandville
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cut down the main bot spam we see on this forum is to stop all American sports broadcasting.

Are you looking for an early grave??

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 10:25 am 
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Potus001 wrote:
Are you looking for an early grave??

nope, just suggesting TIC that we cant always get what we want and some things are part of life, and as you notice, almost all the spam is sports related.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 12:36 am 
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Then delete that spam bot account or deactivate those bot's account.
Add some custom captch like option during registration or during post.
Like add some question to be answered before registration or before posting. >:(

I think, these bots are posting message in forum everyday in a specific date-time.

These must be stopped somehow.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 8:05 am 
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Hi,

we do have alot of antispam methods in place, and they are working very well. However, you will always have a few people who spam the forum manually.

Some of those spammers are humans which just post a lot of times.

if you would like to help us, please report any spam messages by using the Image button. Thanks!

Olaf

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 1:49 pm 
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ooffick wrote:
Hi,

we do have alot of antispam methods in place, and they are working very well. However, you will always have a few people who spam the forum manually.

Some of those spammers are humans which just post a lot of times.

if you would like to help us, please report any spam messages by using the Image button. Thanks!

Olaf

Why don't you delete/deactivate those accounts/bots who post spams?


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 2:15 pm 
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We do, the procedure is as follows:
- global moderator finds spammer or somebody reports one message of a spammer (no need to report all messages)
- global mod checks if it's indeed a spammer (not too hard)
- ban spammer
- remove all messages from said spammer

Problem is that people will always create new accounts to spam, over the years we have banned/removed tens of thousands of spam accounts on the forum.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 2:55 pm 
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Tonie wrote:
We do, the procedure is as follows:
- global moderator finds spammer or somebody reports one message of a spammer (no need to report all messages)
- global mod checks if it's indeed a spammer (not too hard)
- ban spammer
- remove all messages from said spammer

Problem is that people will always create new accounts to spam, over the years we have banned/removed tens of thousands of spam accounts on the forum.

Why don't you create a mechanism so that none can create bot account?
Create some randomized question-answer procedure before creating forum account to stop bot creation.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 3:17 pm 
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Not all spam is s bot account. Some is human. If you would like to suggest a suitable anti spam measure that is 100% please let the team know.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 8:12 pm 
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Anti-bot measures are around, they already stop more than 90% of all spam accounts being created.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2012 10:39 pm 
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Quote:
cut down the main bot spam we see on this forum is to stop all American sports broadcasting.


I up with that not because of the spam, but just because i'm really not much of a fan of sport. In reference to the spam , spam seems to have increased rapidly ever since the Google updates, as people seem to be really stupid enough to think it can help their Google ranking. Many of the low lever forums have changed to having every post screened before it is posted, which have resulted me not even wanting to use the forums. Currently where things stand, is only the marketing forums are exempt from spam bots, because most spamers are not stupid enough to spam in the same forums they try to sell their products.

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 9:32 pm 
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As far as I can see there are a few effective anti-spam techniques not implemented here. New users can automatically be added to user groups with limited posts allowed, with q+a captcha on each post (limited up to a certain time or certain number of posts). Very effective and implemented in newer versions of phpbb.

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2122696

But I am sure admins are aware. Sure is frustrating when you go to unanswered posts and have to scroll through 3 pages of advertising for ray-bans, sports and what not.

I'm not an expert on this type of "black-hat seo" but I can't imagine such activity in 2012 will actually increase their google rank? 100 links in one post, google have to see through that with ease. Still, there must be a reason for it!


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 24, 2012 5:46 am 
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Hahahah operafox i question the same thing day in day out, but you look at through most marketing based forum and see the amount of posts, in which people are asking for automated forum/blog posters is just sad. The thing is when these automated posters make 200 or 300 links in 20 minutes i dont think any of the go through an check the posts. I myself only tried once about 5 months ago when i first started the website in hopes of getting the job done quick. Until i analysed just the first 100 results of some of the doggy places my site was being linked to i gave up. The simple fact is as i always say their is a massive difference between what you class as the web marketer and the web designer. Everyone is trying to make money, its just web markers want money ASAP, normally have very dogy looking sites and use very bad black hat techniques to get there. The difference most are very bad at it and normally end up spamming their site all over the web. Don't even get me started on some of stupid money making websites i have seen or email marketers.

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PostPosted: Sun Sep 02, 2012 7:24 pm 
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mandville wrote:
Not all spam is s bot account. Some is human. If you would like to suggest a suitable anti spam measure that is 100% please let the team know.

I have, no response. But when you say 100% I'm assuming you're being a bit vicious anyways. I've installed 2 modules on my phpbb3 boards and a couple of posting.php code changes, and spam has stopped. My php coding probably isn't no where near on a level as the Joomla! devs, but maybe they work on just that and don't bother with forum stuff. Sometimes I wonder though when the forum's spam code has kicked in and changed tags to [spam], why not just delete the post at that point?

While telling everyone to report it is fine, it's a band aid approach to a more chronic problem. The forums are less useful and severely impacted. Some people, i'd guess (like me) leave these forums for weeks at a time or worse move on to other CMSes instead of dealing with porn, sports, and who knows what else!

Maybe the measures I've installed are already here, my forum has only 30k users and no where near the traffic. One of the mods though work regardless of whether it's a bot or a human, as long as they are listed as a known spammer IP. My Block logs grow by about 10,000 entries in a 24 hour period.

I'll list what I've done with my phpbb3 board:

1. I use the phpbb3s stock captcha with following params:

    Foreground noise: no
    Background noise x-axis: 40
    Background noise y-axis: 5
    Wave distortion: Yes
    Add 3D-noise objects: Yes
    Use different fonts: New Shapes

I've installed other captchas, People-sign, Sortables, etc, they seem to be okay, I just stuck to the default as it appears to work.

2. Installed "Advanced Block Mod"

https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/ ... block_mod/

Major impact, 1000s of blocked registration via RBL lists and fake localized option gets the bots. Humans coming from an IP on the RBLs are blocked.

3. Installed "Disallow links before x posts"

http://skripter.se/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=165

Minor impact, just blocks use of url tag for users under 10 posts. Easily worked around of course.

4. Modifed posting.php so that users with post-count < 5 requires a captcha check before posting.

5. Force all newly registered user's post to have to be approved. Yes, this requires lots of moderation for an active forum, but is it any different from having to dump all the spam posts? At least this way the user base won't see it.

I'm also more then happy to volunteer to help out approving posts. ;)

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