bonienl Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 Perhaps it's an idea to have moderators in different time zones to help fighting the spam? Quote Link to comment
roland Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 Happy to help out from Australia (GMT+10) I might not be so well versed in all matters of the forum, but I can spot spam! Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 bonienl, what about the implementation of some sort of capture for registrations? Also I'm in the UK, haven't got the most free time but happy to help if needed. It's a shame trurl needs to sleep really.. Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 bonienl, what about the implementation of some sort of capture for registrations? Also I'm in the UK, haven't got the most free time but happy to help if needed. It's a shame trurl needs to sleep really.. Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk He can sleep when he's dead. ? Sent from my LG-D852 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 Ideally some spam solution that does not require human intervention for each occurrence. Don't know what's possible on this board but moderator approval of a new members first post would be better than what's been happening this week. Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 I dunno, Squid has convinced me with the "Not letting trurl sleep" argument..... Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 Don't know what's possible on this board but moderator approval of a new members first post would be better than what's been happening this week. Not moderator approval, but instead email verification. Mod approval is only going to annoy new users. Beyond that, we're not letting you off the hook that easy just yet Quote Link to comment
bonienl Posted August 17, 2016 Author Share Posted August 17, 2016 Give the man a break Some automated solutions exist, see http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Spam_-_my_forum_is_flooded_with_spam,_what_can_I_do Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 Don't know what's possible on this board but moderator approval of a new members first post would be better than what's been happening this week. Not moderator approval, but instead email verification. Mod approval is only going to annoy new users. Beyond that, we're not letting you off the hook that easy just yet I don't remember what happened when I first joined the forum. I assumed email verification was already in place and the spammers were getting in anyway. Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 You're correct... Just tried, and you've got to enter an email and reply to it for registration to work. Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 I'm assuming that you're blacklisting the IP and not just username. (although it is entirely possible for a legit user to unknowingly have a spambot running) Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 bonienl, what about the implementation of some sort of capture for registrations? Also I'm in the UK, haven't got the most free time but happy to help if needed. It's a shame trurl needs to sleep really.. Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk Beyond all the joking around at trurl's expense off the top of my head the entire moderation system needs to be adjusted somewhat. Admittedly I don't know everything that a mod does but from a user's perspective the only messages that I see about such and such post has been bilged or this topic has been split is something like 90% from trurl and 8% from Rob and the remainder from Joe. (percentages completely off the top of my head) (And I mean no disrespect to Rob / Joe) The other mods that are still active within the forum outside of trurl, Rob, and Joe have possibly become disillusioned with the job and are no longer picking up their share of the work (from a user's perspective). There are other moderators here that are no longer particularly active within this community, so their lack of contribution can be ignored / forgiven (life does happen) I hope that trurl doesn't wind up in the same situation. Having CHBMB as a mod (he has a job that is meaningless and gives him lots of time) or other users that are still extremely active can only be a good thing. Sent from my LG-D852 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment
bonienl Posted August 17, 2016 Author Share Posted August 17, 2016 Perhaps we should also consider the guy who seems to be around 24 hours a day... (squid don't sleep) Quote Link to comment
bonienl Posted August 17, 2016 Author Share Posted August 17, 2016 No, no squid refuse to sleep (or die)... Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 On behalf of my all my brethren, your day will come Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 Joking aside, the spam is getting out of hand..... Quick look in bilge Quote Link to comment
BRiT Posted August 17, 2016 Share Posted August 17, 2016 During the same time frame, the multiple XenForo based forums I moderate or Admin with more users and activity have seen 0 spam messages. XenForo with StopForumSpam configured let's the staff to focus on what's important, the active discussions. Quote Link to comment
roland Posted August 18, 2016 Share Posted August 18, 2016 I don't claim to be a senior enough member to be an Administrator, but I am happy to become a SPAM-Cleaner if you want to make a distinction like this. This forum has given me a lot of help and I enjoy "hanging" around here. Might as well give something little back. Quote Link to comment
rl2664 Posted August 18, 2016 Share Posted August 18, 2016 Lock down the forum until there is a spam solution. Many threads are flooded with spam... Gesendet von meinem LG-H815 mit Tapatalk Quote Link to comment
bally12345 Posted August 18, 2016 Share Posted August 18, 2016 I was going to mention something similar, so I am on various forums UK based and non UK based. I did report one spam post as I normally do to flag it up but then I noticed the sheer volume of spam and thought best not to report them all as I didnt want to flood the mods with reports. I genuinly dont remember if there was any verification link when signing up or even if site has captcha on registration page. Maybe worth looking at some spam plugins or check if any security updates are available. Just had quick look and site runs SMF 2.0.9 latest version is 2.0.11 Also read Mods to Prevent Spam One of the most important SMF features is its ability to be modified, and at the mod site there is an entire category dedicated to Spam Prevention mods. Some examples of very clever anti-spam mods that have been created by our community are (in alphabetical order): Bad Behavior Forum Firewall httpBL Misc Anti Spam Stop Forum Spam Stop Spammer Quote Link to comment
RobJ Posted August 18, 2016 Share Posted August 18, 2016 I've banned a bunch of spammers now, almost all from a Russian gang, using the same 6 to 10 well known spambot IP's. All of the recent spam appears to be using the same spam software. If we had banned the IP's from these, almost all of the spam would have been blocked. I know there are compunctions from some about banning an IP, so I'd like to discuss the reasons I've become much more ruthless. In my experience, it works! Period. While they probably could spoof the IP, they don't. Period. All of the most recent spam used the same IP's, that have already been on record for heavy spamming. I would estimate that even without spam blocker software for the forum, we would have blocked several hundred of the spam posts by banning the IP's of the first spam that arrived. Now if we consider the case of an IP not yet known on the spam blocker lists, it's either a new spammers IP (from a new zombie machine or a newly infected users' machine) or a spoofed one. While it's remotely possible it's a valid IP being spoofed, from what I've seen, the spammers reuse their IP's over and over. So no matter what we do, that user is going to have big trouble all over the Internet because numerous sites are going to ban them anyway. While I do want to apologize to them, they are still going to need a different IP, to continue without any issues. (And I usually don't ban the IP anyway, if I can find no evidence of abuse and it seems it could possibly be spoofed. If it's going to be abused, I'll probably see it again.) By the way, for moderators, there are several ways to see how many times a blocked name, email, or IP has been hit since the block. Some have been hit thousands of times, meaning thousands of blocked spams. These bans do work. A human would quit after failing a few times, these are obviously spambots. As to forum spam blocking software, we've had this discussion several times before. I would again recommend adding one of the popular spam blocking extensions, as they have been proven to work over and over. I would have to say that from what I saw of the recent spam, not one post would have gotten through. All of the IP's were well known spambot IP's. Different user names, different emails, but the same IP's. Some day, they'll start randomly spoofing IP's, but they haven't yet. Quote Link to comment
bonienl Posted August 18, 2016 Author Share Posted August 18, 2016 I don't know how well providers in that side of the world protect their internet access, but it is very common for providers to disallow address spoofing. Making it impossible for users to fake their origin. It can happen of course that spambots are started from somewhere else. The site of SMF refers to several spam protection mods, I would consider them as a step moving forward to automated protection. Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted August 18, 2016 Share Posted August 18, 2016 Thank you.... It'll be possible now to actually use the forums first thing in the morning again. (Plus trurl I think that I'll let trurl get some sleep again ) Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted August 18, 2016 Share Posted August 18, 2016 When you detect what is obvious spam is it possible to delete it rather than move it to Bilge? The current treatment interferes with trying to only read new posts. Quote Link to comment
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