These Asian bot-takeover posts.

[Breplum]

So annoying and seemingly prevalent. I will be hoping to see them blocked. Good luck

 

[LLigetfa]

I will be hoping to see them blocked.

While you are waiting, you can mouse over the name and click on ignore. After that refresh the page and they will be invisible.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Terry]

sorry we are after them left and right. we have set up extras spam/bot precautions we will be doing a forum over haul this weekend.

thanks for the patience.

 

[DirtyJerz]

While you are waiting, you can mouse over the name and click on ignore. After that refresh the page and they will be invisible.

Thanks for the tip

 

[Jeff H Young]

sorry we are after them left and right. we have set up extras spam/bot precautions we will be doing a forum over haul this weekend.

thanks for the patience.

Thank you, not really a bother to me but i feel it is to others and is selfish and rude of them to waste peoples time and whatever other harm they want to do

 

[Dustbunny]

Another forum I frequent blocked all chinese IP addresses.

Another forum with this same spammer has made it that all new member posts must be reviewed (by an admin) before it posts.

 

[Terry]

Another forum I frequent blocked all chinese IP addresses.

Another forum with this same spammer has made it that all new member posts must be reviewed (by an admin) before it posts.

We do have any foreign ip on spam search as well as location, and now a much more strict captcha process.

I personally run another forum with post approval. But we have over 30 admin who do approvals and moderate. With the amount of traffic on this forum it would take a team of 200. Terry loved that this was a little more open to all. And we will do what we can to maintain his inclusive vision for a platform

Bests, Andrea Love

 

[Zenon2cubed]

I also manage a website and found most of my spam and hacking was originating from data centers, I blocked whole subnets at the firewall level without affecting any legitimate users. Just a suggestion.

 

[LLigetfa]

It looks like these two spam-bot accounts are sleepers and should be deleted.

 

[Weekend Handyman]

We do have any foreign ip on spam search as well as location, and now a much more strict captcha process.

I personally run another forum with post approval. But we have over 30 admin who do approvals and moderate. With the amount of traffic on this forum it would take a team of 200. Terry loved that this was a little more open to all. And we will do what we can to maintain his inclusive vision for a platform

Bests, Andrea Love

Just don’t ban Canada

 

[JohnCT]

We do have any foreign ip on spam search as well as location, and now a much more strict captcha process.

LOL, good thing I already joined. I never get by the captcha things. "Is that the bumper of a bus or a guardrail??"

John

 

[GrumpyPlumber]

Just don’t ban Canada

I dunno, Ryan Reynolds might disagree....

 

[Taylor Love]

LOL, good thing I already joined. I never get by the captcha things. "Is that the bumper of a bus or a guardrail??"

John

It's also a good thing you have more than five posts then. I do still prefer the picture captchas more than the book reading captchas though. Those book reading ones are quite diffficult. Thinking about making it so that new users also have to solve the captcha for any post or replies until they have a certain number of post/replies already. Maybe 5? 3? Not sure yet.

I'd also like to get the email server working again. It's ironic, really. I need to enable email validation to prevent spam, but the emails won't send because Google thinks the emails are spammy. Hopefully we'll be able to figure this out.


Also, there are libraries out there that can analyze a post and make a best guess as to which language the post is in by looking at the syllables in the sentences. It wouldn't require contacting any external APIs either, so it wouldn't incur any additional costs to do it. Basically, if a post isn't written in English I think we can safely assume the poster isn't on the correct forum.

 

[LLigetfa]

Thinking about making it so that new users also have to solve the captcha for any post or replies until they have a certain number of post/replies already. Maybe 5? 3?

Do note the two sleeper accounts I mentioned above have generated enough garbage posts to get past post count limitations. Also, some spammers will create several benign "placeholder" posts that slip past initial scrutiny and then later come back and edit them. Edited posts don't pop back up as new posts so may not catch the attention of mods.

 

[LLigetfa]

Here is another spammer racking up junk posts.

 

[Taylor Love]

Do note the two sleeper accounts I mentioned above have generated enough garbage posts to get past post count limitations. Also, some spammers will create several benign "placeholder" posts that slip past initial scrutiny and then later come back and edit them. Edited posts don't pop back up as new posts so may not catch the attention of mods.

Oooooh. That is sneaky. Good point. Hmmm. I'm not sure how to handle post editing yet. The sleeper accounts will take some thought, for sure.

 

[LLigetfa]

The sleeper accounts will take some thought, for sure.

It makes it easy if all they do is post garbage. Just delete and ban then like you do regular spammers. Some however get real sneaky and copy another member's question so that it looks legit and it only get detected if someone recognizes it as a copy and reports it.

 

[Taylor Love]

Just added some new anti-spam code. Should be usable to automatically reject a lot of the new accounts we've been getting based on IP and email accounts. Also made it so moderators have better access to the anti spam clean-up tools (Or whichever group has access to the spam cleaner).

The spammers remaining are going to have to do a bunch of captcha, so they at least won't be able to fully automate registrations.
As for getting our emails off of the google block list, anyone have any experience with that? It doesn't just go to the spam folder, it literally does not even reach the spam folder. God help us if anyone ever needs a password reset email. I checked the firewall, so that isn't it. And emails DO send. Just not to gmail.

 

[DirtyJerz]

Looks like Google has a dedicated article here https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126?hl=en

 

[JohnCT]

I'm not sure how to handle post editing yet.

For now I guess reporting of the edited posts by legitimate members should alert the mods in good time for deletion/deactivation. I automatically report any and all of these spam bot posts in any forum to which I'm a member.

John