Anti spambot solution

[orudge]

Also, phpBB 3.0.8 was released last night. I shall try to upgrade to it shortly (probably once I'm back in the US in a week's time), and it apparently includes some CAPTCHA improvements.

[Dante123]

just saw this add-on on the phpbb website from one of the mods.
might be of great use

http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/a ... 61c47914fe

[orudge]

That looks interesting; I may wait to see if other users test it first, though, since it seems to be quite a new mod. I'll stick it in my bookmarks, though.

[SkeedR]

I propose this: http://xkcd.com/810/
EDIT: Just realised how long ago this was replied to... :/

[kamnet]

It's interesting to watch how the spam manifests itself. Just saw a post where on first-glance over a forum, it fit in really well. Then I realized that it just directly copied another user's post from three years ago. Also slick was the fact that it was a post about ferries with links to images of various ferries, and the link in the spam post was to a website that sells ferry tickets.

I think tt-forums gets some rather unique types of spam. Makes for a good read at least before they get the axe.

[orudge]

We are now filtering out a large amount of spam, and spambot registrations. The little that gets through is evidently "special" enough not to be picked up by the filters, or reported as spam on other forums.

[Illegal_Alien]

[...]
I think tt-forums gets some rather unique types of spam. Makes for a good read at least before they get the axe.

So you are suggesting to make a "Spam Hall of Fame" ? As some of them are rather awsome to read.

[kamnet]

I think that would be a fun thread to put into Off Topic.

[Purno]

Spambots have also messed up the Birthday list at the bottom of the index...

They're a real pain in the a**

[Lord Aro]

well, at least we know that they're all spambots...

[michael blunck]

Today the forums celebrates Spammers´s birthday:

spammers birthday.png (32.75 KiB) Viewed 4082 times

Dear spammers,
I wish for you to have people to love, people in your life who will care about you as much as we do. Happy birthday.



regards
Michael

[orudge]

Spambots have also messed up the Birthday list at the bottom of the index...

Today the forums celebrates Spammers´s birthday:

Those spammers have been taken care of, and a few spammy e-mail addresses banned. Alas, it seems that as we block certain forms of spam, they come up with new ways to irritate us...

[Sufkop]

(being funny)It's quite weird that spam can be found online. I always thought that they sold spam in a supermarket (being funny)
(being serious) But, what's the problem about spam? I should say: 'Don't read spam!' (being serious is now finished)

[Simons Mith]

A fix that (apparently) does a good job of defeating link spam on another forum I visit (which does allow posts from unregistered users, so it is vulnerable) was to look for posts that contained external links, and the first time someone posts such a link, ask them a trivial question only someone interested in the subject matter would know or bother to find out. If they get it wrong, don't allow the post. I'm not sure if that trick would be feasible here, but I thought I'd mention it.

For example:

You appear to be trying to post a link to an external site. In order to ensure you are someone interested in Transport Tycoon and not a random spammer, please answer the following:

What is the surname of the person who wrote the original Transport Tycoon game?

Once someone has successfully answered the question, set a cookie and let them post in future without interference. OTOH if they never post a link, they'll never hit the question. You can compile a small list of these questions and if one does get out you can switch to another.


Edit: And if you whitelist links to the wiki and other established openttd sites (hell, anything that matches 'openttd' might do) then the chance of someone legitimate even hitting the block are significantly reduced.

[Chrill]

If Owen is willing to incorporate such a mod, and if that exists for phpbb, then I would be in support of it. Especially as the whitelist "improves" as more websites and links are added to it. I quite like the idea of this

[orudge]

I don't currently know of any mod for that. Plus, we've already introduced measures that have cut down hugely on the amount of spam that gets through. Unfortunately, as we do that, the spammers try to come up with new means of getting through. Already, many suspicious spam words will get a post held for moderation, and I really don't like adding more mods to the board. (I'm still convinced that this phantom login CAPTCHA problem people are experiencing are because of this anti-spam mod I introduced, as nothing else has changed.)

[Dante123]

most efficient would be to track them down and hunt them down, too bad that ain't legal

[michael blunck]

Congratulations! This forum has much much more spam bots than human members, given the fact that alone 571 spam bots are celebrating their birthday today.

regards
Michael

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[orudge]

Conveniently, them all having the same birthday makes it significantly easier to delete them all!

[michael blunck]

Conveniently, them all having the same birthday makes it significantly easier to delete them all!

But how "deleting them all" doesn´t affect the forum member count at all? Before deleting ~570: 33666, after deletion 33669 (+3 new members, I presume)?

regards
Michael