Spam

[Ishad Nha]

That was hotKiz, that leaves at least two spammers who have not made a return visit: aerorkata and jennycoquine.

You would think that hotKiz would sign up for a new account under a new name now that we know he is a spammer.

Edit:

Spoke too soon, "aerorkata" is back again.

[Dakk]

That was hotKiz, that leaves at least two spammers who have not made a return visit: aerorkata and jennycoquine.

You would think that hotKiz would sign up for a new account under a new name now that we know he is a spammer.

Edit:

Spoke too soon, "aerorkata" is back again.

It's very very likely not actual humans doing the spamming, it's bots. That's why the messages are in russian on english boards and so on. Bots don't care, they spout gibberish (erm.. spam) according to script 24/7.

[Kulyok]

Though I can understand the move, as most of them seem to be coming from Russia. One thing I do NOT get however - how much mentally retarded one has to be to post spam in RUSSIAN language on ENGLISH forum?!

 

Searching bots still tag those links. It's still money, I guess. And, hey, they could be coming from Belarus or even Turkmenistan, you never know.

[Eleima]

Yeah, why always blame Russia, after all? Some good things come from Russia too, right Kulyok?

[Kulyok]

Coming to the country near you very soon. If you see Xan mod spam adverts all over Rome in mid-November, don't be frightened.

 

Anyway, my point stands: while captcha, e-mail/username banning/revoking of posting privileges and new user approval are great methods, the only cure against spam is policing the forums 24/7, since bots are spamming 24/7. If there's a more effective method, I certainly haven't heard of it.

[Anomaly]

There is a way to prevent spam bots to blindly spam.

 

Add a security question that only a human and specifically a human that got at least basic knowledge in the world of Baldur's Gate can answer.

 

Question: What's the name of the PC foster father in Baldur's Gate ?

Answer: Gorion

 

If you don't know the answer, you can't post or register.

 

Captcha can be guessed by bots since they are used everywhere and so bots has been attuned to get past them. But custom questions will be much harder, since they would have to tune their bots to G3 specifically, something they will obviously not do.

 

With that, only way bots could get past in would be to use known security holes to get past the protections. In that case, upgrading the forum software should be a really high priority.

[cmorgan]

Seeing that you are having admin CP panel problems, can you not disable these bots by increasing their warning level and select disable which is located under their name? This being an IP board it has that neat little function.

 

You know, this is G3... I don't think anyone ever actually thought about the warn" buton I tried that out, as much as I could do with basic global admin stuff, increasing the warn level. There is a default timer set on the warn, so I will keep trying until it expires, and see if I can get their level high enough that the disable appears.

[Ishad Nha]

Again, "aerorkata", someone just nailed him hooray.

You can make the questions very specific to G3 and modding, "who is the head of this board?", "who wrote Dungeon Crawl", "what is the expansion to BG2?".

[Ishad Nha]

Those two are online again?! Here comes more spam!

[berelinde]

I have found that questions such as "How many noses do you have? [integer]" Work well enough. Keep in mind that this community does have members that joined for NWN2 mods and therefore know little if anything about BG, BG2, or any other IE game. Scandalous, I know, but there you have it.

 

Of course, before the admins can implement those features, they need to be able to access the admin control panel. Which they can't do.

[plainab]

You can make the questions very specific to G3 and modding, "who is the head of this board?", "who wrote Dungeon Crawl", "what is the expansion to BG2?".

Keep in mind that this community does have members that joined for NWN2 mods and therefore know little if anything about BG, BG2, or any other IE game.

uh... I joined for BG & BG2 and I don't know who the head of this board is or who wrote Dungeon Crawl. I do think the expansion to BG2 is ToB but then I could be wrong and it is really G3 BG2 Fixpack coupled with Unfinished Business

[lynx]

Time to change hosts?

[Anomaly]

I thought earlier on this thread it was said that admins could access the admin CP.

 

If they can't, that's another story. Because of what? Bugged or corrupted forum software, rights problem because of the host, or rights problem because of missing people with the right rights ?

 

If this is the bugged or corrupted forum software, you really should upgrade the software (yes I know IPB is not free) or switch to another software. Old IPB versions are known to be extremely vulnerables to Spam. Even SHS, which use a newer version of IPB, suffers from spam as well.

[plainab]

I am not sure if the spammer did this or someone else did it for the spammer, but ran across one that had the below as signature & as their from location.

 

SPAMMER. DELETE ME. -cmorgan

 

It's kinda funny if ya ask me. Tho if the spammer did it, seems like they're trying to make a challenge or something...

[cmorgan]

Nope - I just flagged them for Theacefes. I'll stop signing, them, though... it is enough that all of their member entries are easily searched for by DELETE ME. It may only save a minute of time (perhaps less) but it at least gives Grim and Theacefes a quick way to identify the spammer accounts on a fly-by.