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strings
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22 Jun 2017, 7:23 am

SaveFerris wrote:
Surely it must be counterproductive for a spammer to create problems like this as common sense would suggest new measures would be used to stop you.


I think the problem with this forum is that it is not counterproductive for the spammers to continue. It seems that no countermeasures are ever used to stop them posting, and so they continue to flood GAD with mountains of spam, seemingly every day now.

I cannot imagine how administrators of this forum could decide that the best policy against the spammers is to do...absolutely nothing. And yet that appears to have been their decision, for months or years now.



SaveFerris
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22 Jun 2017, 7:29 am

strings wrote:

I cannot imagine how administrators of this forum could decide that the best policy against the spammers is to do...absolutely nothing. And yet that appears to have been their decision, for months or years now.


[ Devil's advocate ] How do you know that is the admin's policy , appearances can be deceptive. [/Devil's advocate]


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strings
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22 Jun 2017, 8:00 am

SaveFerris wrote:
strings wrote:

I cannot imagine how administrators of this forum could decide that the best policy against the spammers is to do...absolutely nothing. And yet that appears to have been their decision, for months or years now.


[ Devil's advocate ] How do you know that is the admin's policy , appearances can be deceptive. [/Devil's advocate]


Well, I only said "...appears to have been..."

I am just taking a humble phenomenological approach here, and observing what has been happening for months or years. I am assuming, rightly or wrongly, that there exist ways of preventing newly-signed-up members from initiating essentially unlimited numbers of new threads. (My belief is based partly on thinking about what ought to be technically possible, and partly on the observation that no other forum sites that I use suffer from the same problem.)

Thus, I am forced to conclude that the probable reason the problem persists on the WP website is because the administrators have decided not to implement a policy that would stop it happening, even though such policies probably could be implemented if they decided to do so.

Assuming that the administrators have thought this through logically, I thus have little alternative than to conclude that they have made an active decision that the optimal policy is to do nothing to deter the spammers.

It is a compete mystery to me why they would reach this decision, but phenomenological observation and logic would seem to indicate that this is what they have decided.

I remain baffled by this.



SaveFerris
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22 Jun 2017, 8:04 am

strings wrote:
SaveFerris wrote:
strings wrote:

I cannot imagine how administrators of this forum could decide that the best policy against the spammers is to do...absolutely nothing. And yet that appears to have been their decision, for months or years now.


[ Devil's advocate ] How do you know that is the admin's policy , appearances can be deceptive. [/Devil's advocate]


Well, I only said "...appears to have been..."



Sorry , I missed that bit - ignore my last comment :oops:


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strings
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22 Jun 2017, 8:21 am

SaveFerris wrote:
strings wrote:
SaveFerris wrote:
strings wrote:

I cannot imagine how administrators of this forum could decide that the best policy against the spammers is to do...absolutely nothing. And yet that appears to have been their decision, for months or years now.


[ Devil's advocate ] How do you know that is the admin's policy , appearances can be deceptive. [/Devil's advocate]


Well, I only said "...appears to have been..."



Sorry , I missed that bit - ignore my last comment :oops:


No problem! :)

I was slightly venting at that time, because it strikes me as being so passive and feeble, for the administrators to let this go on and on without (seemingly) any attempt to put a stop to it. If they have been trying to stop it, it would be nice some time maybe to hear an explanation about how they tried, but the spammers outwitted them for this, that, or another reason. But somehow, one is left with the impression that there is no will to do anything about it. That is what leaves me feeling frustrated.



friedmacguffins
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22 Jun 2017, 8:42 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
Me being a Spectrumite: Is it more correct to call "sewage" "sewerage?"


sewer rage, swearage...

You ideologues should give this bot a job in politics. Probably doesn't even need to know what you're saying. Just processes payment.



SaveFerris
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22 Jun 2017, 11:59 am

strings wrote:
SaveFerris wrote:
strings wrote:
SaveFerris wrote:
strings wrote:

I cannot imagine how administrators of this forum could decide that the best policy against the spammers is to do...absolutely nothing. And yet that appears to have been their decision, for months or years now.


[ Devil's advocate ] How do you know that is the admin's policy , appearances can be deceptive. [/Devil's advocate]


Well, I only said "...appears to have been..."



Sorry , I missed that bit - ignore my last comment :oops:


No problem! :)

I was slightly venting at that time, because it strikes me as being so passive and feeble, for the administrators to let this go on and on without (seemingly) any attempt to put a stop to it. If they have been trying to stop it, it would be nice some time maybe to hear an explanation about how they tried, but the spammers outwitted them for this, that, or another reason. But somehow, one is left with the impression that there is no will to do anything about it. That is what leaves me feeling frustrated.


It used to annoy me but now I have embraced the spam and it just looks like decoration to me now :D


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Jono
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25 Jun 2017, 5:23 am

Just a suggestion. Why not put a word blacklist in the site code, where you can add strings, words or phrases by known spammers in order to block them before they post? For example, the current spam always has the same phone number in thread titles and posts, so it could be used to block this "Baba Ji" spam before even the first post get's made.



harry12345
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25 Jun 2017, 8:52 am

How Spam Bots work

Quote:
I have a forum that's getting hit a lot by forum spambots, and of course the best way to defeat something is to know thy enemy. I'll worry about defeating those spambots later, but right now I'd like to know more about them. Reading around, I felt surprised about the lack of thorough information on the subject (or perhaps my ineptness to input the correct search terms for better google results).

I'm interested in learning all about spambots. I've asked on other forums and gotten brush-off answers like "Spambots are always users registering on your site."

How do forum spambots work?
How do they find the 'new user registration' page? (I'm especially surprised because some forums don't have a dedicated URL for this eg, http://www.forum.com/register.html , but instead use query strings or even other methods invisible to the URL bar)........
[more]




More about spambots

Quote:
Why do 'hackers' setup bots repeatedly fill out web forms?

There is something I don't get, one of my web apps has a small form that allows you to enter you name and email address to "subscribe" to a user list for a site I maintain. The site is very low traffic, and only useful to a very small number of people that live in a very small town..it would be of no interest to anyone else.

Yet, every day, sometimes many times per day, someone (or a bot) is entering fictitious names and probably bogus email addresses into the form.

This form is not even active on my site anymore, it just happens to still exist as an orphaned page on my IIS directory (which tells me that someone is searching for these types of forms via Google, because there is no path to this form if you come in thru the default page.

This is not a big hassle for me, I can solve the problem with captcha, but what I don't understand is for what purpose would someone setup a bot to repeatedly fill in forms? I figure there must be a reason, but for the life of me don't know why?

What am I missing?
[more]



Tawaki
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25 Jun 2017, 9:37 am

adoylelb90815 wrote:
I also think a limit on posts by new members should be done, as these spambots just clog the GAD forum most of the time with their sewage. Right now, this forum has the worst spam problem I've seen in a long time, when compared to other forums I post on.


There are a few medical forums I frequent...

New members can not post for 72 hours. You do have access to all the form.
New members have a limited amount of posts/day for one month. Members are topped off by so many new posts/hr. It's a big amount, like 10/hr.

When I see spammer trash flood a forum it usually means the owner does not care anymore. The above set up is NOT hard do do, and has been around since early 2000s.

Alex, you are losing your street cred when I have to go back to page 5 to see new posts, because some halfwit is getting his rocks off spamming your site.

Get it together or sell the site and get your cash out of it. Watching wrongplanet die a slow death is sad.



AspieUtah
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25 Jun 2017, 9:57 am

Tawaki wrote:
adoylelb90815 wrote:
I also think a limit on posts by new members should be done, as these spambots just clog the GAD forum most of the time with their sewage. Right now, this forum has the worst spam problem I've seen in a long time, when compared to other forums I post on.

There are a few medical forums I frequent...

New members can not post for 72 hours. You do have access to all the form.
New members have a limited amount of posts/day for one month. Members are topped off by so many new posts/hr. It's a big amount, like 10/hr.

When I see spammer trash flood a forum it usually means the owner does not care anymore. The above set up is NOT hard do do, and has been around since early 2000s.

Alex, you are losing your street cred when I have to go back to page 5 to see new posts, because some halfwit is getting his rocks off spamming your site.

Get it together or sell the site and get your cash out of it. Watching wrongplanet die a slow death is sad.

I have to agree. At a point in the near future, the weeds will overtake the flowers regardless of best intentions. It is a certainty unless something to succeed at rectifying this problem is created and used with vigilance.


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Diagnosed in 2015 with ASD Level 1 by the University of Utah Health Care Autism Spectrum Disorder Clinic using the ADOS-2 Module 4 assessment instrument [11/30] -- Screened in 2014 with ASD by using the University of Cambridge Autism Research Centre AQ (Adult) [43/50]; EQ-60 for adults [11/80]; FQ [43/135]; SQ (Adult) [130/150] self-reported screening inventories -- Assessed since 1978 with an estimated IQ [≈145] by several clinicians -- Contact on WrongPlanet.net by private message (PM)


smudge
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25 Jun 2017, 10:05 am

Can someone offer to buy this place from Alex Plank?


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smudge
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25 Jun 2017, 10:08 am

If someone bought it, there should be a vote on who Alex sells it to, so the members all know it's going to be in safe hands.


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Canadian Penguin
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26 Jun 2017, 9:00 am

I'm willing to help with addressing this problem.


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jamesthemusician
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26 Jun 2017, 9:32 am

As a new user, I would love to participate more on this forum, however the spam has made it exceedingly difficult to post anything, as I fear it would get knocked down the pages by the spam.



Aaron Rhodes
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26 Jun 2017, 9:37 am

I know any suggestions here will likely be ignored or not even be seen by developers, but it's worth a shot at least. I know it would be very inconvenient, but they should have new members enter those recaptcha codes every time they post a new topic or comment on an existing one. It's my understanding that they use those to prevent bots from spamming websites. I know this site had me enter one when I made my account, but it's easy enough for someone to make an account and then let the bot loose on the site.