PasswordMaker Forums

Miscellaneous => Other => Topic started by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on August 04, 2006, 01:43:30 AM

Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on August 04, 2006, 01:43:30 AM: For whatever reason, there's two of almost every forum (Tips and Tricks only have one) under the Firefox edition. I moved the topics from the one with forum id 1 (which all the spam appears in...) to the one with the id 20.

The reson for this is because it seems our forums got picked up for spamming, and it always picks the forum with the id of 1. We'll see if this changes things.

[edit] This means you will have to resubcribe to the forum.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on August 04, 2006, 02:01:14 AM: Quote
For whatever reason, there's two of almost every forum
Two of what? Spam posts? Do I need to resubscribe to all forums or just one of them?
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on August 04, 2006, 02:20:54 AM: Sorry, I meant the Feature and Request Forums. That's the only one I'm changing. If the others have the same issue, then I won't bother with it anymore.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on August 07, 2006, 01:04:40 AM: And it seems the bots/spammers just post in the first forum, no matter what the ID.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on August 29, 2006, 05:10:07 AM: WTF? How can we stop this?
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on August 30, 2006, 01:17:28 AM: I wish I knew. It almost seems we're actually being targeted. I wonder if IPB is that popular that it can compare to Windows for being hacked to high heaven?
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on August 30, 2006, 01:33:17 AM: We could switch to moderated posting, at least on the forum that always gets the spam. Then we'd have to approve posts before they appear. What do you think?
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on August 30, 2006, 02:54:18 AM: If there's a way to put new members on moderated posting, I would go for that. If not, then I guess we'll go that way.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on August 30, 2006, 02:58:12 PM: I have it set so that only new topics need to be appoved. Since the spam is always a new topic and never a reply (for now), this should work.

I can't find an option to put new members on moderator approval with posts yet.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: thibros on August 30, 2006, 08:23:47 PM: Do we have email confirmation while creating an account? Which emails do the spammers use? If it's a always one on the same domain, maybe we could block them.

Sorry, my summer's been busy, but now it's getting better. I've been following the forum, though.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on August 31, 2006, 01:05:46 AM: Email confirmation may help crib it without needing a queue at all. Thing is, that's a little too much work for the end user I think. Only if it truely gets out of control should we bother with that.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on August 31, 2006, 01:41:52 AM: Oh, I thought we already required email confirmation. 90% or more of the forums I've registered for in the last 12 months have required email confirmation, so I don't think it's asking too much!
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on August 31, 2006, 01:54:41 AM: Doing email confirmation does scare off new members. Well, just signing up to post does as a matter of fact.

I wonder if setting all the forums to queue mode will allow us to have guest posting again?
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: thibros on August 31, 2006, 06:13:33 PM: How do people know there's no email confirmation before signing up?

When I see any forum where I'm not a member yet I just assume there's email confirmation (because that's de facto standard now, in my experience), so it actually came as a surprise here when there wasn't any.

I don't think it'd scare off many members, I wouldn't mind if it'd be turned on.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on September 01, 2006, 01:36:13 AM: Since we are already requiring users to sign up on the forums, might as well turn on e-mail confirmation. I think the step for possible lost members is not that great (compared to signing up or not)
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on September 04, 2006, 07:55:56 PM: So far (5 days), this seems to have had a big effect. Lots of registrations, but not posts... I can only assume that means they never confirmed their email addresses?
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on September 05, 2006, 03:25:50 AM: Maybe.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on September 25, 2006, 01:39:07 PM: And now the spam moves to Help and Support...
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on September 25, 2006, 03:45:48 PM: They still have to confirm their email address, right? Why would the Help and Support forum matter?
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on September 25, 2006, 04:30:58 PM: There are spam posts still being made, it just moved to the Help and Support part of the forums. It seems there is someone whose job is to do a normal sign up at places with e-mail confirmation or something.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on October 23, 2006, 02:46:37 AM: Some may have noticed that a certain Post Icon disappeared. This is just a test to see if the spam that appears here are based on some bot that is clueless to CSS. So any post I see using the Post Icon for a topic should be considered spam automatically. Yes, the smilie is still there. That is useful. We'll see how it goes.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on October 23, 2006, 02:58:10 AM: Where's the Post Icon? Oh, nevermind... you removed it.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on October 23, 2006, 07:02:45 PM: BTW, another idea is to place new users' posts in moderation until they have, say, two successful posts.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on October 23, 2006, 07:29:57 PM: I haven't found a way to auto add new users yet. That's what I wanted to do, but can't find a way to do so.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on November 30, 2006, 12:03:19 AM: Spam posts are still getting through. I deleted three today.

I recently saw another approach at spam posting prevention: password-protecting the boards that receive the spam posts. The password can be publicly displayed in the description of the boards here (http://forums.passwordmaker.org/index.php) and/or elsewhere on the site.

What do you think?
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on November 30, 2006, 02:52:16 AM: If we do that, maybe we can enable guest posting as well.

I like it. Let's see what others have to say.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: tanstaafl on November 30, 2006, 12:31:50 PM: Ok with me...
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on November 30, 2006, 04:00:15 PM: OK, which forum(s) do the spammers attack most?
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on November 30, 2006, 07:44:12 PM: FYI, I've had to delete posts that are replies to existing threads. I think we need to turn on moderation of posting for thread replies, not just new threads.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on December 01, 2006, 02:11:10 AM: Ok, all forums are now password-protected. Also, replies (not just new threads) must be approved by a moderator.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on December 01, 2006, 07:55:36 PM: Do we really need to have threads (and replies) approved by a moderator? The way I see it, if the password protection works, then we don't need to have anything moderated. And having everything needed a moderator approving is what's messing up e-mail notifications.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Eric H. Jung on December 01, 2006, 08:21:55 PM: Quote from: miquelfire
Do we really need to have threads (and replies) approved by a moderator? The way I see it, if the password protection works, then we don't need to have anything moderated. And having everything needed a moderator approving is what's messing up e-mail notifications.
OK, we can turn off moderation for replies and see how it goes. Do you want to do that or should I?
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: Miquel 'Fire' Burns on December 01, 2006, 09:04:07 PM: I'll do it.
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: LkonKbd on December 03, 2006, 09:08:40 PM: Greetings one and all,

Am doing some testing with IEv6, could not get into post on another forum but this one did allow me in using IE. Have not updated my sig yet but I am now running in "98SE2ME" will explain more later, if you want to know more. I do NOT know why anyone would want to use IE for any thingy, it is sooooo ssssslllllllooooooowwwww and requires a new Window for any selection you make, NO TABS!!! Am planning to also go for an installation of "98SE2XP" later to see how that would work.

Well this is enough of this garbage in IE, am closing this one down, will be back in FFx in a short, ByCycle!!!
Title: Spam control effort
Post by: LkonKbd on December 03, 2006, 10:34:55 PM: After an hour and 25 minutes I finished posting to another Forum, "MSFN" to be exact, took so much time to create a post my dialer died and had to start all over again, lucky me, I had copy/pasted my post to clipboard and managed to save all of that work.

Well EYE C there are NO takers on my updates of my system so the END of this TALE or is that tail? Whatever!!!

"I thought I knew that I knew what I thought,
but; now I know what I thought I knew isn't
what I know I think I thought I knew . . ."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .Author UnKnown
Edited by LkonKbd on12/14/06 > > NOTE the sig, now up to the XP and MP v10. How is the ÂµSoft version for IE coming along? Just curious . . . Have the Happiest Holidays ! ! !