TubeNet

The level of autosubmitted spam has reached new disgusting lows lately.

Why not add one of those "Tell me what letters/numbers you see in this (graphics)" displays when a new post is submitted?

Just a suggestion. I wouldn't mind it in the least.

Or at least when a new user signs up. I haven't minded doing it on other sites, knowing it's keeping the spam down, including back to my email.

the elephant wrote:Maybe you could ask someone like Bloke, who is here all of the time (sort of), to volunteer time to approve new accounts.

Personal approval from the sysadmin will stop most spam posts, but it becomes a major job for the sysadmin.

I think the sysadmin could easily spend 30 minutes a day sifting through new users.

The way phpBB works, users are added to the database even before the sysadmin approves their membership. So, the sysadmion has to check each new user to determine if they are legimate. If the new user is legimate, the sysadmin approves the user. If they are not legimate, then sysadmin must delete them from the database.

schlepporello wrote:For what it's worth, Sean's doing the best he can in trying to deal with these sorry excuses for life forms and he has implemented a few changes in registration. As was mentioned earlier though, the spammers have gotten smarter also. Sean has recruited some moderators and they are doing the best that they can to help Sean in getting rid of these spam posts as soon as they appear. However, when you spend 8-12 hours a day at a job with no internet access it's awful hard to take care of some of these until you get home.

Most of these creeps post only once and then move on to some one else's board to post their spam. While moderators can't ban the user, the post at least can be taken care of. Just bear with us, we're doing the best we can.

There are more things I could do, but the more safeguards I put in place, the more inconvenient it becomes for me and for new users.

The programmers of the bots which do most of the spam are very adaptive though and already read the graphic confirmation with random letters. They also already wait random amounts of time to seem more legit. They even gather the email confirmations and "click" them. There is also very little IP address patterns to blanket block.

There are things I have seen which might end the nonsense such as requiring an invitation from any other member to join. But that would really cripple new users from joining freely. The email confirmation is already a pain in the *** for many, especially AOL users whose email accounts have a tendency to file ALL email from TubeNet in the spam folder.

So we will keep plugging along.

If it continues to be this bad then I might start with some of the other solutions.

I think Sean is keepin' up really well. He not only deleted today's spambot post in "off topic", but deleted my parody of it that I posted, probably since my post wouldn't have made any sense without the original spambot post?

I volunteer to delete all the disgusting autosubmitted spam from Wade!

I think I have them mostly beat now. Changed some stuff around and also found a pattern I can watch out for.

Keep me posted if you see any more sleaze.

Username: practowrx
Email: pornaster@mail.zp.ua
IP: 201.253.187.119
HOST: host119.201-253-187.telecom.net.ar

This is the latest account requesting activation. hmmmmmmm should I activate this account or delete it?

I'd check to see if his dorn is any good first.

windshieldbug wrote:I volunteer to delete all the disgusting autosubmitted spam from Wade!

Just a minute. We all know that Wade's spam is not autosubmitted.

TubaRay wrote:We all know that Wade's spam is not autosubmitted.

Speak for yourself. Wade's spam is unusually well spelled for a tuba player. I rest my case.