Spammers posting

[patrick]

If the captcha doesn't work, I don't see what the big deal is with making each person having the approval before joining the forum? In my experience, you can pretty much tell from the person's email who is a spammer and who isn't.

Yeah, it may take an extra 24 hours for a newcomer to get approved but that makes the approval even more sweet.

Just a thought...

[pradyumna]

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. Is there no way to block the IP addresses or anti-spam or something?

i thinks we cant we cant do that.. blocking all ips not possible

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
Maybe not, but for spammers like you I'm willing to try.
Ban by Kagemusha

[Antonath]

I know it's not the admins' fault, but I think the forum will be unusable inside of a day unless you can kill off the current invasion. Time for a captcha upgrade?

[renaud_AkitaPA]

The user ,den_flatc, just spammed the heck out of the Current JET forum. First five pages are filled.....

[Patryn]

not to mention "rusalka" posting in the FAQ forum.

[DavidPC]

Thanks guys! We're cleaning up the spam mess now, and have temporarily disabled new user registration until we beef up our spam prevention.

[mikesalvatore]

Are they getting smarter these days? I'm starting to wonder if the spambots have become sentient, or if they are even bots at all anymore.

[bduddy]

Yes, the spambots are definitely getting better at making posts that appear vaguely related to the topic... all it takes is that one, innocent-looking link for them to get the clicks or search engine boosts they needed...

Maybe you should consider a system like this? http://xkcd.com/810/

[SaitamaPA_Denise]

Maybe you should consider a system like this? http://xkcd.com/810/

Lol, indeed!

I'm guilty of not being on the forums as often as I usually have been, which makes wielding the Spammer Sword of Justice a little more difficult. In the meantime, though, if you (and everyone else) could flag the posts that are spam and/or questionable then it makes it easier for the mods to find later on. A very big yoroshiku onegaishimasu

Example of a questionable post:
-Brand new user
-User's first post was shortly after they joined
-Not on topic, or questionably on topic/a comment of little (if any) value

Sometimes if you check their user profile they have spam links there, but sometimes they just leave the account and post for a while, then come back down the line and post spam in their signature or profiles.

[hatefulsandwich]

Ah, the irony.

[Musashi]

Are they getting smarter these days? I'm starting to wonder if the spambots have become sentient, or if they are even bots at all anymore.

Well, there are people who get paid to "astroturf" forum's with spam.

So making a new user approval process with captcha and question verification on signup might help.

Anyhow the mods should focus on removing spam instead of secretly, and discreetly censoring active users.

[teabot]

hi
The new CAPTCHA that you created is amazing i really appreciate you...

LMAO

[Musashi]

This place has some serious problems. They should upgrade this crappy forum....

[Antonath]

I've given up reporting spam in the last few days. Yes, the mods are quick to remove it and ban the account, but when the spammers are back with a new account ten minutes later, what's the point? I get the feeling the forum has been put on some sort of list as being an easy target.

Here's an idea: how about making most of the forum read-only unless there's a JET number associated with your account. 'Applying' would obviously remain open to all - including the spammers - but it would at least keep the spam from appearing in every single sub-forum. There's an anonymity argument to be made, in that forum moderators would easily be able to figure out who's who, but I suspect our 'local' PAs have got most of us pegged already. Also, I guess this counts as a software upgrade, which CLAIR seems loath to do.

[word]

Yeah; I'm tired of trying to report spam, too. It gets old.

I run a forum using phpBB, too, and I've never had any problems remotely like this. I don't think it's their software; I think it's that they've just got their security settings wide open/configured badly.