Anti-spam measures

[GingerAdonis]

As you may have noticed we've been getting a lot of Chinese spam the last couple of days. The spammers bypass the CAPTCHA and have realistic looking email addresses.

Starting from today all new members need at least 1 approved post before their content shows. Plus we've hardened our other anti-spam measurements.

Thanks.

[Nubbie]

What about all the temporary accounts being used for the spam (that post 1 thread and then never being used anymore), are they removed?

[Broxzier]

The new measurements don't seem to work, there's a new topic posted just now.

Edit: Make that two

Edited September 28, 2016 by Broxzier

[YoloSweggLord]

I can't see those topics, but they're showing up as unread on the forums front page, meaning that it looks like there's unread posts in that topic while I can't access said topic.

Why don't we just ban posts containing to many non-english characters? I'd say 50 or more and the post can't be posted.

[Nubbie]

2 minutes ago, YoloSweggLord said:

Why don't we just ban posts containing to many non-english characters?

Requires filters etc I presume, and also, what if someone use a lot of different characters on the forum which could trigger a false positive - For example, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Right Yolo? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Edited September 28, 2016 by Nubbie

[YoloSweggLord]

Just now, Nubbie said:

Requires filters etc I presume, and also, what if someone use a lot of different characters in the chat which could trigger a false positive - For example, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Right Yolo? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Yes but who's really gonna make a post with that many lennys? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[YoloSweggLord]

20 minutes ago, YoloSweggLord said:

 

I can't see those topics, but they're showing up as unread on the forums front page, meaning that it looks like there's unread posts in that topic while I can't access said topic.

 

This is what I mean:

It's quite irritating as I would like to see what is and isn't read so I can stay on top of the forums, so to speak.

[Broxzier]

That looks like a bug in the forums, deleted posts shouldn't be visible anywhere.

[GingerAdonis]

Unfortunately the forum index cache seems to be invalid now until new posts are made in relevant forums (or until I find a way to force a new cache). The actual posts are indeed deleted and not new posts.

[RuneLaenen]

55 minutes ago, YoloSweggLord said:

Yes but who's really gonna make a post with that many lennys? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

A filter which filters relatively would be better. For example posts with over 10% non-english characters get filtered.

this would have been an easy edit with the old custom (openrct.net) forum code but Im not sure how to do such thing with IPBoard.

[GingerAdonis]

I had these kind of spammers before on a different board. After the same anti-spam measurements as these it stopped after a short while.

[imlegos]

"Words can not express how much I hate China right now" - Soldier

In all seriousness, I still don't understand why a spambot is attacking us with Chinese advertisements for American collages, on a forum site that would register as English...

[Nubbie]

1 hour ago, imlegos said:

In all seriousness, I still don't understand why a spambot is attacking us with Chinese advertisements for American collages

It's probably a person who isn't doing it to advertise - but to 'troll'

The text doesn't seem to advertise much, instead talk about collages copied from websites and posted here

[cascadia]

2 hours ago, imlegos said:

"Words can not express how much I hate China right now" - Soldier

In all seriousness, I still don't understand why a spambot is attacking us with Chinese advertisements for American collages, on a forum site that would register as English...

 

29 minutes ago, Nubbie said:

It's probably a person who isn't doing it to advertise - but to 'troll'

The text doesn't seem to advertise much, instead talk about collages copied from websites and posted here

I believe it has links to a college admissions help service.  Also, posting spam on an active forum helps them increase their Google rank temporarily.

[imlegos]

Is it just me or is there still the name of a spam and a test by jarno in the forum list?

[SensualEthiopianPolice]

3 hours ago, cascadia said:

 

I believe it has links to a college admissions help service.  Also, posting spam on an active forum helps them increase their Google rank temporarily.

I'm pretty sure it's a bot

[Broxzier]

4 hours ago, cascadia said:

Also, posting spam on an active forum helps them increase their Google rank temporarily.

Until Google finds out, in which case their website will be removed and blacklisted from all searches. Search engines give a domain a higher score when a lot of sites link to it, so they have been fighting people abusing their rating system by using linkfarms since forever.

[cascadia]

6 hours ago, SensualEthiopianPolice said:

I'm pretty sure it's a bot

Yes, it's a spambot run by the help service to boost themselves unfairly.

[GingerAdonis]

12 hours ago, imlegos said:

Is it just me or is there still the name of a spam and a test by jarno in the forum list?

It's the cache which I tried to clear but didn't work out as expected. Guess we'll have to wait for a new reply in those forums.

[Nubbie]

As it keeps on spamming, a possible fix could be to analyze the wording being used and ban a specific keyword from posting, something that hardly would affect normal users and just stop the spammers

[imlegos]

How many people here use chinese characters?

[Nubbie]

33 minutes ago, imlegos said:

 

How many people here use chinese characters?

 

Almost none do as English seems to be the native one- but what I mean is banning one word that are being said in every spam mail which could be 'diploma, University, labourlawenhancment' (In chiniese of course) or any other letter that is just being said in every spam post

[cascadia]

The spammers are back again. 

[Arystina]

Eww, spam.

[SensualEthiopianPolice]

49 minutes ago, cascadia said:

The spammers are back again. 

what gave it away?