Spam

Craig Stevenson · Apr 6, 2011

Can I appeal to all Members, If you see the iPhone4 SPAM that has been appearing on here nearly every night for a while that you click the little triangle to report the post to Mods\Admin, the Muppet is probably posting from the same IP so it's beyond me why the Admins can't just block his IP or email or use some keyword blocking.

Can the Admins please say whether this has been tried with this SPAMMER and\or have the Admins reported him to his ISP etc?

Regards

Chris Butcher · Apr 6, 2011

IP Bans are too easy to get around

Senad Subasic · Apr 6, 2011

I doubt this is an actual person

. A better CAPTCHA could do the trick, but don't know what vBulletin has to offer there.

Omer Said · Apr 6, 2011

Is it such a big deal? Just don't click to those topics... No offence, i understand your point, but you know we would stop it if there was a way.

Also whenever an admin/moderator sees it, it's destroyed. Sometimes there are some delays but we are also humans, can't be online 7/24.

About the IP bans.. It also blocks some innocent people's ips aswell... And not all spammers come from the same ip range. Most of the time, they are different people.

And as i know Bram tried even the hardest ai stopping ways on registration, but nothing stops them. They are professionals :O

These are just my answers and i'm a fool, an admin will probably give you a better and complete answer

But again,,, is it such a big deal? These are like illegal advertisement posters around our streets. Do they bother you so much?

stefano.schivari · Apr 6, 2011

some month ago hackers crack the chapta code so now the spam bot can register easly on all forum board,I have IPB and same problem for me

Dave Stephenson · Apr 6, 2011

Eyghon,

They don't all originate from the same IP so an IP ban would be ineffective. In my experience most of these bots use proxies so and IP ban would not work anyway as they will simply use another proxy. It is a common problem and one we have no less or more problem with that anyone else. I have looked at a number of ways to reduce the number and will continue to do what I can.

In the meantime you are absolutely right, the best thing people can do to help is hit the report button and we'll take care of them as quickly as we can.

Jim Cole · Apr 7, 2011

I can't imagine that the people sending out all that spam believe that they will generate business from such tactics. If everyone is like me, they would be wanting to find a way to shut them down permanently, and I am sure the moderators are very similar to me in this regard, but unfortunately the spammers not only use proxies, a lot of them have their own server farms and usually their own domains as this is big business we are talking about. There are several companies out there that make a lot of money spamming anything and everything that their customers want to get out there.

Bram Hengeveld · Apr 7, 2011

Youll be surprised when you see the numbers how effective spam is Jim. Its a huge (illegal) business and a lot of people earn a lot of money with it. (some people do actually click it and some are so stupid to actually buy an iPhone that way only to find out it will never arrive

)

Nick Deeley · Apr 7, 2011

stefano.schivari · Apr 7, 2011

yeh your right is relatively cheap for the spammer send 1000000 mails and sure in 1 mln of people you can find 100 that buy your products.I read in a website that talk about hosting that many webmaster sell his users database to other companies that use users info to send spam emails or do research,for this reason when you do the registration into a new forum read all Forum Terms & Rules page before press accept.For give an idea of the money that you can do with an database of users i read that for a DB with 10000 users you can gain about 100-130 euro (database with info like name email age phone number etc).

Jim Cole · Apr 7, 2011

Unfortunately some of the SPAM that is out there is actually legal and paid for by large corporations. As for the phone thing, you can buy just about any phone cheaply, but if you wish to activate it and use all the features with your provider you are in for a little surprise.

stefano.schivari · Apr 7, 2011

yeh but if they spam for iphone maybe i could be happy...but often i recive viagra spam......

Nick Deeley · Apr 7, 2011

I dont see any spam advertising spam...maybe i should start doing that..selling spam via spam emails

Jeremy Paterson · Apr 7, 2011

Captcha is useless.
On the forum I host (via phpbb) I have a custom profile field in the registration where the person has to type in the answer to a question to be able to register. It won't stop humans, but it will stop bots.

For example, during registration you could ask something simple like: "How many wheels does a typical car have?"
Then make it so that the only accepted responses are "4" and "four"

Some bot-coders have actually started catching onto this and making them able to figure out the answers on their own if the question is too standard. An example of a weak question would be: "What is two plus four." The bots can figure that out. Make it something that requires a little bit of human thought, but not so difficult that people can't register.

Some other possible good questions would be:
What country is (*insert car manufacturer here*) from?
What animal is on the Ferrari logo?

You could even make it something that someone might have to look up, like:
What year was BMW founded?

Senad Subasic · Apr 7, 2011

Jeremy Paterson said:
Captcha is useless.
On the forum I host (via phpbb) I have a custom profile field in the registration where the person has to type in the answer to a question to be able to register. It won't stop humans, but it will stop bots.

That's also a CAPTCHA :tongue:. Q&A, available in the newer phpBB releases. I use the same thing, no problems.

I wouldn't use anything that's easy to answer via a Google search.

Erik Tveit · Apr 7, 2011

What's "Bram Hengevold"s name? :tongue:

Nick Deeley · Apr 7, 2011

What is the air speed velocity of an unladened swallow.

Correct answer: african or european swallow?

At which point, the server will crash, and your computer will jump out the window into a pit of eternal peril, that magically appears outside, and swallows up anything, before disappearing as quickly as it came....

Jeremy Paterson · Apr 8, 2011

Senad Subasic said:
That's also a CAPTCHA :tongue:. Q&A, available in the newer phpBB releases. I use the same thing, no problems.

I know the Captcha you're talking about, but mine is just a regular Custom Profile Field. I still have to update to the newer version. I'm afraid to because I have it so modded I'll be pulling my hair out trying to fix everything.

Dave Stephenson · Apr 8, 2011

Jeremy Paterson said:
Captcha is useless.
On the forum I host (via phpbb) I have a custom profile field in the registration where the person has to type in the answer to a question to be able to register. It won't stop humans, but it will stop bots.

For example, during registration you could ask something simple like: "How many wheels does a typical car have?"
Then make it so that the only accepted responses are "4" and "four"

Some bot-coders have actually started catching onto this and making them able to figure out the answers on their own if the question is too standard. An example of a weak question would be: "What is two plus four." The bots can figure that out. Make it something that requires a little bit of human thought, but not so difficult that people can't register.

Some other possible good questions would be:
What country is (*insert car manufacturer here*) from?
What animal is on the Ferrari logo?

You could even make it something that someone might have to look up, like:
What year was BMW founded?

that's exactly what we run. Even change the question relatively often. Word is that there is a way around the vb one anyway which kinda sucks. The problem is information sharing. Big boards are targets for all, one guy comes along and checks the answer and posts it somewhere, before you know it every bot in the land is here. Whatever way you go they find a way.

There are some sites around for site admins to automatically feedback spammers info and get up to date info on the latest reported spammers, I'm looking into the stuff to integrate them at the moment. It's sort of punkbuster for forum registrations.

Craig Stevenson · Apr 9, 2011

Dave Stephenson said:
that's exactly what we run. Even change the question relatively often. Word is that there is a way around the vb one anyway which kinda sucks. The problem is information sharing. Big boards are targets for all, one guy comes along and checks the answer and posts it somewhere, before you know it every bot in the land is here. Whatever way you go they find a way.

There are some sites around for site admins to automatically feedback spammers info and get up to date info on the latest reported spammers, I'm looking into the stuff to integrate them at the moment. It's sort of punkbuster for forum registrations.

Thanks for info Dave, I'm sure things are being done in the background to combat this.

Regards

Craig