Spam, spam, spam spam...

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This is just what I've seen in the General Autism Discussion forum ALONE. I had already reported like a third of these, but when I scrolled down, there was more! This is getting way out of hand.

wiped.



not exactly saving the world, but i get the feeling.

Another spambot
memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=118371

There's been an eruption of spam from one babaastrologer10 , who's posting every 2 minutes in "General Autism Disicussion". I've reported a couple of them, hope someone with admin acecess can do more.

It's getting ridiculous, and something more needs to be done. We're swatting flies when we should be targeting the manure pile. Maybe a cap on the number of topics you can create per day? Maybe not allowing topics containing the common words they use eg baba, vashikaran? Maybe something like you have to be a member for a certain period of time before you can create topics?
Keeping banning any spambot won't work, they just create another account. It's not successful.

Is it bad that I could go for a SPAM sandwich right now? xD

For goodness sake sort this spam out. Why not just ban anyone from ther country from joining or not allowing threads containing 'marriage solution', 'vashikaran' etc from being created!?

^ because they will very quickly find a way around it, seeing many of them don't have those keywords and the (very few) actual people interested in marriage solutions or vashikarans wouldn't be able to post.

they use proxies IIRC.

Isn't there anything we could do?
Sorry to sound blunt before, but I'm sure you'll agree it's extremely annoying.
We need to have a less glitchy captcha if you ask me. In all the posts I've made on here I've only been captchad once. This is how the machines get around it. If we sort this out it'd go a long way to solving this problem.

They could move captcha to log in to prevent bots from logging in instead of using it to verify new threads and posts (which is doesn't work half the time).

They could also do like most other forums, require a minimum unique post minimum in a certain time frame before being allowed to post a thread like many sites do.
Some do 300 unique posts that have substance and minimum character count before being able to post a thread.
But you have to hit that in a few months to before being able to post.

Other also stop you from posting new threads if you've been inactive for X amount of time and require you to post X amount before you can create threads again.

They could also do blanket ISP bans from Korea, China, and India (where most of the bots come from).
Though they would need a system for those who genuinely wish to become members, to be able to get verified for an account.

They could also update the site to a modern form, though it would cost money and not completely eliminate spam.

It's not possible to completely eliminate spam, without forcing some secure verification method

Sounds good, I completely agree.

But getting them to do it is another thing...

Okay. Nothing we do can work without trade-offs.

But what about the flip side?

Why do we have safeguards in place that we know full well do don't guard against anything?

Like the captchas you have to go through to post on already existing thread. What are they supposed to be protecting us against?

No robot as ever participated in an existing thread, nor as any robot ever quoted another post, nor has any robot ever entered an existing thread to make any kind of nonoriginal post, nor has any robot ever pm'd anyone (as far as I know). Yet in every one of those actions we have to prove to the captchas that we "are not robots".

Why is that?

The only thing robots do is to make original posts (usually on the General Autism Forum only) that usually dont turn into threads (because no one responds to them- not even other robots). So original posts should be the only action that needs a gatekeeper.

That's actually a very good point.

Exactly, but it the sense of security it generates is priceless.

It's like TSA and the U.S. security apparatus, hasn't succeeded in preventing anything, but projects the sense of security to the public.

i have suggested moving captcha to login and thread creation and it would work.

browsing posts for "substance" must take up a lot of time though, and we don't have a real guideline as to what counts. but it shouldn't be too hard, hopefully.



yes, we would. i can recall one current user off the top of my head who is from that area. i don't think this forum software supports that verification feature you propose, which is just another argument for switching to a new one...again.

i have already done some IP lookups on the massive amounts of spam threads and have blocked several that match. it's the most i can do, but i'm reluctant do do it since a lot of them point towards brisbane, which actually is home to a few WP members, i think.



no, spammers are indeed fully capable of screwing up existing threads. it's just this particular "breed" we have now that doesn't do it. trust me, i had a hell of a time last year trying to clean up the nightly spam from many existing threads in practically all of the subforums. it was worse when other users posted after the spammer, forcing us to use a totally different process to avoid deleting the innocent posts. in a way, these spammers are actually easier to deal with.

the "babaji love solution" bots don't send out PMs, but once in a blue moon we get other ones that do.