G*d damn spammers!

[MadMike]

Just nuked another one here and on CS. Where the fuck do they all keep coming from? Get a job, and get the fuck off our boards, you fucking losers!!! Die die fucking die already!!!!

(Takes deep breath)

OK, I feel better now. Up until maybe two years ago, it was extremely rare for someone to actually go thru the trouble of signing up on a message board just to spam it, only to get banned and have their posts removed. I think I could could the number of times that happened on one hand, and have fingers left over. But now it happens constantly. The regular members don't see it because of the moderation system. At least they make themselves easy to spot, and most of the time we kill them before they even get to try and post. Hell, the one on CS I nailed while he was in the middle of registering.

It's good to be the king admin.

[lordlundar]

It stems down to one standing point, popularity. Up until two years ago, there was minor mentions of the website. At the point you mentioned, CS was getting a lot more noticed, even popping up on mainstream websites and other sources internationally. That level of attention brings out spam systems like magnets. The more a site gets linked to, the more likely a bot program and spammer is going to find it.

It's an interesting choice, really. Either dwell in obscurity or suffer the slings of those who want to capitalize on the popularity.

[Boozy]

Hell, the one on CS I nailed while he was in the middle of registering.

I love it when that happens. I caught one in the act a few months ago, and it was quite satisfying.

I like to picture someone weeping into their hands and lamenting their inability to outsmart the CS and Fratching moderators. Unfortunately, they're probably just spambots.

[MaggieTheCat]

Just out of curiosity, how do you catch a spammer while they're registering?

[jackfaire]

Just out of curiosity, how do you catch a spammer while they're registering?

My guess would be blatantly false information?

[Boozy]

Just out of curiosity, how do you catch a spammer while they're registering?

We can see who's registering at any given moment, and we have access to their IPs and e-mail addresses. If they look fishy (which they might for a variety of reasons) then we can run those IP/e-mail addresses through a database of known spammers. If we get a "hit", we apply a ban.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Sometimes it isn't bots; it's actual people. That's how they get past the whatsit where you have to type a series of numbers and letters to prove that you're a person. One message board, we had a trio of spammers who were obviously people, as they only ever posted when there were no staff present. One would post an innocuous topic, such as "What did you have for dinner?" then another would post, and the third would follow with the spam link. -.-

[RecoveringKinkoid]

That just seems like so much trouble to go through, considering so few people actually will see the post, if any.

It really baffles me that it's worth it to them.

[Mr Slugger]

Sometimes it isn't bots; it's actual people. That's how they get past the whatsit where you have to type a series of numbers and letters to prove that you're a person. One message board, we had a trio of spammers who were obviously people, as they only ever posted when there were no staff present. One would post an innocuous topic, such as "What did you have for dinner?" then another would post, and the third would follow with the spam link. -.-

Oh you'd be surprised at what the bots can do. When I ran CS there was a bot that I was testing (and mind you this was years ago) with minimal input could act like a poster. In fact I think other than a couple of mods no one knew it was a bot. Granted it was on the server side, but this forum software is one of the major and there are bots that can tell when mods are by either collecting data or because the mods are in a default mod user group so the bot looks if it finds that a mod group is online it moves to the next board.

[Bloodsoul]

I remember the second Gamers.com message board (after the Lithium boards were dropped) being plauged with spammers for a good, long while.. especially porn spammers <___< Although mostly it was just oddly/repeatedly named members signing up but never posting (though I recall once that anyone who signed up to Gamers.com itself automatically signed up for the forums, so perhaps there were some real members there who simply never bothered with the forums).

I miss the second-gen board and the Lithium boards prior to it; once Gamers.com was bought by another company I simply stopped bothering with it; the second-gen board was just such a closenit community. Well, there's still Xbox LIVE in the case of two of the members.

[MadMike]

Ironically, my thread in Site News about spam prevention was spammed not once, but twice.

[Rapscallion]

Oh you'd be surprised at what the bots can do. When I ran CS there was a bot that I was testing (and mind you this was years ago) with minimal input could act like a poster. In fact I think other than a couple of mods no one knew it was a bot. Granted it was on the server side, but this forum software is one of the major and there are bots that can tell when mods are by either collecting data or because the mods are in a default mod user group so the bot looks if it finds that a mod group is online it moves to the next board.

Didn't know that about being able to detect a mod group. Interesting. May look to see if there's something that can fake that - keeping a mod group account perma logged in.

There's a program that can log in member accounts (including verifying the captcha stuff) and it's been used to promote itself on CS, though it's never been seen advertising. There're also Chinese sweatshops dedicated to spamming boards - just a copy/paste for someone in a cube somewhere to spam, and that's human verification right there.

The current Trollguard system (Ree's idea, MadMike's implementation) isn't perfect in that it puts off some new people, but it's one hundred percent effective in stopping spammers, trolls, the charmless neo-nazis we had a few christmasses ago, and so forth. We've had them all. I have no intention of dropping the system.

Rapscallion

[Mr Slugger]

Didn't know that about being able to detect a mod group. Interesting. May look to see if there's something that can fake that - keeping a mod group account perma logged in.

Yeah say admin is group 1, super mods are group 2, and mods are group 3 by default in the forum software there's programs that can read that information. But say you create group 5 and the supermods were there instead of in group 2 then these programs would never find the mod.

[Arcade Man D]

Sometimes it isn't bots; it's actual people. That's how they get past the whatsit where you have to type a series of numbers and letters to prove that you're a person.

That's called a captcha, for your future reference.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I prefer the term whatsit. :P