To the forum moderators and to eFrontier, or Mike...

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 8:35 pm

This guy (Johader43) is making massive spam posting inside legal threads.
Please boot him!

dreeko13 · Post by **dreeko13** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 10:30 pm

myles wrote:
Rasheed, it's the old proverb - if you want something done, give it to a busy person.

also if you want to know the quickest way to do something, ask a lazy bastard

artfx · Post by **artfx** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 10:48 pm

Genete wrote:
artfx wrote:So do you look like your avatar? I always assume people look like their avatar. This makes me worry for Selgin and Rasheed.
Do you look like your avatar?

Me not of course

My hair is a little longer now, but yes I look like my avatar.

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 12:03 pm

Finally, Lost Marble is trying to deal with spam posts himself, as an administrator. I really hopes it works, this spam bucket section on the forum.

Rhoel · Post by **Rhoel** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 5:46 am

The automated posting engines or bots are not using the name of the topic to post spam, they are using the number of the topic to post: In the general topic, that number is http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5. I know this from discussion at the phpBBS forum, my own dummy Spamcatcher forum site and from what happened when Mike changed the name for this forum from Moho discussion to AS dusussion - the spam continued at the same rate.

THe bot was manually set up - someone came onto the forum, looked around then copied the topic/s number/s into the spam bot.

Creating a dummy topic to catch spam is not going to work since its thought that Trollbots which look for forums, currently do not automatically enter the topic numbers into the Spambots. A human interface is there somewhere - seeing a topic called SpamBucket will give the game away.

But the idea of a SpamBucket is a good one. But if it is to work, the ID number of the bucket has to be 5 and not 17.

This can be done two ways and they both carry a risk of damaging the message database. So the database has to be backed up before the mod is made.
1: You ammend the SQL database manually - my knowledge of MySQL is limited and I have no idea how to write that kind of script.
2:To go into the Admin control area and do the following from the board config panel.

Create a new topic called Anime Studio general discussion:
Delete the current Discussion Topic - a new windw opens and asks where you want the esisting posts to go - choose the new Discussion thread.
Delete the SpamBucket.
Rename the old Discussion Topic, SpamBucket.

Then sit back and watch the spambots drop all the junk into f=5, which of course is now the new Spamcatcher. f=18 will be spam free until a Spamamster visits this site again or reads the data from a TrollBot.

As said, this is high risk. However, backing up the database is just a one click of the mouse button. Restoring the database is just as easy.

All the rest of the current mods has been done. The visual authentication is turned on, the email verification is turned on: Changing the SpamBucket t of-5 should complete the protection of the general area.

Rhoel

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Ammendment:
There are two problems with this.
1: If you delete the topic, how d oyou rename it

2: Though I did this manually on my forum, I just discovered one of the Bot posted automatically to the new forum.

Good experiment but not the solution.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 2:50 pm

Yikes...

I thought it would be simple and fun to kill a few spams...

This is a nightmare. Do you realize if there weren't a bunch of moderators deleting these things the whole forum would be mostly spam? The useful content would be outnumbered totally by spam.

I will still get them if I feel like it, it won't be a priority. I just spent nearly 10 minutes deleting the same evil post from nearly every forum topic. I have done the same thing twice now.

You know, people get hit by buses, fall in the shower, or choke on a fish bone, every day. I hereby submit a curse with all the power of karma to all the evil spammers in the world to have something like that happen to them.

As far as I am concerned, spammers are more evil than... tailgaters!

Would there be any way possible to delete ALL posts by ONE username in one go? That would make it easier. Or maybe being able to view all posts from a user and have deletion controls on that screen.

p.s. The same "guy" posted in almost all the forums... as well as the spambucket... so... that isn't working.

-vern

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 4:59 pm

heyvern wrote:Yikes...

I thought it would be simple and fun to kill a few spams...

This is a nightmare. Do you realize if there weren't a bunch of moderators deleting these things the whole forum would be mostly spam? The useful content would be outnumbered totally by spam.

This is one of the reasons I didn't apply as a spam buster. Anyway, if Lost Marble isn't willing to install some server-side measures to fight spam, and the spam continues, I don't know if I'm willing to continue on this forum. I'm getting a bit annoyed

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 7:14 pm

Mike apparently is looking at ways to do this, and spam is an issue on many forums. I wouldn't abandon a perfectly good community because of a few scumbuckets to tell you the truth. I will usually nail the ones I see several times a day whenever I'm online.

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 8:15 pm

I know, I know. I just wanted to utter my frustration.

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:09 pm

Rasheed wrote:I know, I know. I just wanted to utter my frustration.

iz'okay. I tends to take evrithin litral az I gets older. Sorry, tired and slurring my text.

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 1:12 am

There's got to be an automatic way to keep all this crap to a minimum. Moderating a forum shouldn't feel like shovelling sh*t into the wind. Where's the fun in that? I wouldn't mind re-registering on the forum and having to type in a response to a visual code if it meant not having to wade through this garbage all the time...

artfx · Post by **artfx** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 9:12 pm

I've seen PhpBB forums that require users to enter a captcha (or whatever its called with the scrambled letters) code to register. Wouldn't this stop all bots who SPAM completely?

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 10:06 pm

It seems that people are joining as humans, and then leave the spamming to a spambot. So no, that wouldn't work.

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 11:28 pm

Well, yeah, but you can't just throw your hands in the air and start wailing. Those people that join as humans might be able to make one or two spam posts, but they can then be identified and their account closed...

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 11:57 pm

We already have those scrambled characters at registration, so if the spammers aren't finding sneaky ways to enter (in which case this forum should be patched), they actually must register as humans. The problem is that registration doesn't take very long. For instance, on Animationforum.net, I had to wait, because the adding of new members is done manually by the aministrator (it took 24 hours). Those scriptkiddies don't have enough patience to wait 24 hours. Young and impatient... That would stop most of them, I guess.