How do we deal with spam bots?

[Saracen 16]

The Question's clear, I've seen a few of these registering now, and this naradadas has been the first from what I can see...

 

All moderators keep their guard up in their respective Forums... Bin or directly delete any of this spam immediately!!

 

Sonic, an immediate IP Ban on this bot is needed.. I've spent ages cleaning the forums :roll:

[Sonic 295]

Good job with the clean up. I've deleted the offending posts in the TIbEd forums.

 

Fenring sent me a PM alerting me to this. I have deleted the rubbish accounts and banned the IP addresses.

[Doctor Destiny 41]

If you think its suspect, do something about it. Bots ALWAYS post in all forums but some have a limit of how high they go. I could have cleaned it out last night but I'm not a moddie.

[Prism Tank 0]

you'll all be pleased to know im not a spammer. i hate spammers and flamers alike. i mean, come on, some members cant even post half a dozen times without double posting. (just wanted to express the fact i hate it as much as sonic and the moderators do)

 

the forum that i have come from (www.cncgeneralsworld.com/forums) has a very strict spam policy. its called the ban for spam policy and its a zero tolerance spam ban. ive known two or three members who got banned there recently because of it. i suggest we take up a similar action. details in the announcements section.

 

(ps im not the same General Leang on that site as i am on this one)

[Sonic 295]

Saying we have an anit-spam policy isn't going to stop these bot things from posting crap.

 

We are just as tough on regular users posting spam and flaming though.

 

A few months ago these forums were hit by a real nasty one, it registered about 180+ accounts in the space of 5 minutes, thankfully no posts were made, if they were the clean process would have taken ages. To delete all the accounts I had to manually edit the MySQL database.

[Luk3us 63]

Have one of those image thingey security measures.

 

Like you see an image with a bunch of characters and ya have to type it into the box... Bots can't deal with them.... Though I'd have no idea how you'd intergrate that here...

 

Well thats my suggestion. :wink:

[Doctor Destiny 41]

It's a phpBB mod.

 

And a feature in newer versions if memory serves correctly.

[Koen 2]

I seemed to have missed this. Thanks for cleaning up Sonic.

[Sonic 295]

It's a phpBB mod.

 

And a feature in newer versions if memory serves correctly.

I don't want to add mods these forums, its pain when upgrading to newer versions.

As Fenring said, phpBB 2.2 (whenever it gets released) should have that feature.

 

I seemed to have missed this. Thanks for cleaning up Sonic.

It wasn't that bad. 2 rubbish posts and thats all.

[Prism Tank 0]

i take it the definition of a spam bot isnt just any old spammer or flamer

[Doctor Destiny 41]

I don't want to add mods these forums, its pain when upgrading to newer versions.

As Fenring said, phpBB 2.2 (whenever it gets released) should have that feature.

Actually, Acyd Burn documents all the changes from the new version into a mod so you can just update your files that way without remodding it.

[Luk3us 63]

i take it the definition of a spam bot isnt just any old spammer or flamer

 

Its just a bot. Not a person.

[J-Fire_Man 0]

Did I miss something? Looks like something terrible has just happened at the forums.

[General Leang 0]

I think the people here do a very good job in keeping this place free of spammers and people who come here to cause trouble. Really all I can suggest is to continue to be vigilant and if there is a post that is suspect then err on the side of caution and delete it and the person who posted it.

[Sonic 295]

Did I miss something? Looks like something terrible has just happened at the forums.

It wasn't anything really bad. Just some usless spam and junk that was cleaned up by C&C King.

[Saracen 16]

All hail me!! :wink:

 

I've gotta stop drinking on Sundays

 

Nope nothing serious, if it was then you would of noticed when you arrived back here. I've just noticed a huge rise in some of the other fourms I used elsewhere in non-C&C forums. I was waiting for something like this, and was waiting to address the issue once it had happened. Which was sooner than I thought...