This spam is getting out of hand

[Techercizer]

All right Mods, this issue has been discussed in other threads, but now the spam on our site is starting to get ridiculous. Aside from cleaning up the spammy threads and damage control, we need to either reinstate E-mail verification or utilize some sort of anti-bot filter.

From other posts:

Since E-mail verification has been disabled, we've seen a large spike in spam in the off-topic sections. I don't know if they're related (if they're done by bots it might be), but is there some anti-spam guard you can use? I mean, if Email verification can cut down on spam,`worst case scenario is people'd just have to create a Gmail account, which is free anyway.


I know many forums have a registration requirement that verifies a human is creating the account, like a picture with words written in odd ways, and you must type them. Why not try implementing that?

I wikipedia'd it and apparently it's called C.A.P.T.C.H.A. I found the original site, so here's the php version:

Captcha at it's finest:
http://recaptcha.net/plugins/php/

and as to what Captcha is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

EDIT:
Do The Admins have the authority to modify the programming of these Forums? cuz if not implementation is going to be pretty much down the drain.

x2 Edit:
This topic should probably be split into a new one concerning the discussion of Forum security, or Spliced into the email verification thread already in existence.

Even though this has been posted elsewhere, a thread here is more likely to give this issue the publicity this deserves. Not to mention that this is the section for website issues. Is any of this do-able ?

[WlknCntrdiction]

i think out of hand is an understatement. its frikkin everywhere on the forums wherever you look.

[otakufreak907]

And (This does sort of have to do with spam since there are 2 spam topics there...) why can anyone post under Company News? Shouldn't only admins be able to post there? XD.

But yeah, this spam is getting a a little over the top.

[Zackariahas]

More like a outbreak.

Needs to be cleaned up and blocked off. The admins should set up people as moderators to help keep it under control.

[Ikaruga]

That or the administrators themselves need to visit more often. It seems like they only check the forums every couple of days, and frankly it needs to be more often than that until you can get some moderators chosen.

For now I think they should just re-activate e-mail verification until the bug with Hotmail addresses can be fixed. There's a lot of places that offer free e-mail accounts, so people who really can't wait to register still can.

[Techercizer]

or impliment a Captcha to deter spambots.

[murphy_san]

gone for a weekend and look what happens :mad:

all the spam should be cleaned up now at least. I re-enabled email verification for now...

I was worried about the bots. I do have the picture verification thing but obviously that isn't enough..

Ill see what I can do today to make things better, thanks for your suggestions.

[murphy_san]

hey guys, so it appears email verification should be working now. Here are the issues now though which I cant do anything about....

Web based HTML mail clients like hotmail have pretty aggressive spam filters. Mail sent via php (like this forum) will be sent to the Junk folder in some of these cases. The only thing people can do in this case is check their junk folder if they use these clients.

Ill make a sticky up in here

[Zackariahas]

Thanks Murphy. I didn't know spam bots can get past the random word picture.

[ATC 1982]

Guess the spamers are back and in full force

[otakufreak907]

This has gotten to the point of ridiculousness, either the Admins need to select people to become moderators or they need to shut down registration.

[ATC 1982]

This has gotten to the point of ridiculousness, either the Admins need to select people to become moderators or they need to shut down registration.

It is funny you say that cause there are only about 3-5 of us from the begining who still come here.

[Ikaruga]

That's the problem. Like less than 20 registered users aren't spam bots. :/ And look at how many of those supposed 20 don't even post. These forums are as good as dead, but no one's really doing much to help. Of course, there's not much you actually can do to help...

[michaelab]

i have just reported every post i see, but yeah this is friggin nuts

why the hell did they disable gmail verification????

and im still here :) as are the rest of us, but yeah if they arnt going to police it whats the point of having it???

i propose that each post can be flagged as spam specifically, and then it could be deleted by a majority vote over a few days

[ATC 1982]

I feel your pain and sent an E-mail to Sassy reguarding this. I do troll this site and don't post as often as I should.

[ATC 1982]

Sassy did respond and is letting the other two moderators know to handle this while she is away on vacation. So we should see changes soon. Just giving you an update.

[otakufreak907]

Woohoo! Thanks, ATC!

[ATC 1982]

No problems it is what is best

[michaelab]

quick update, apparently it isnt working, some guy is advertising something about browning as of the 25th, after the anti spam measures were promised to be re-instated

[ATC 1982]

I noticed this as well. Hum.....I wonder if the Moderators really care who post here any more. This seems to be just a site filled with spam. I might have to avoid this site at work if this keeps up.

[michaelab]

something you might want to consider in respect to the trickling spam, is a vote to ban function, this coupled with admin policeing will be very effective i think

[Sassy1]

Still figuring out all the funtionality of vBulletin. How do you implement a 'vote to ban'?

[michaelab]

every post would have a small vote function, ebaums has something similar but it is a rating system and not voting, after the voting is enabled there would be a time frame of say 3 days for the vote to exceed a certain number (because of our lack of activity i would start with 5) if this quota is filled the post will be removed

you could also try the same thing for members, so we can ban inactives and spammers directly

[saburo]

Still figuring out all the funtionality of vBulletin. How do you implement a 'vote to ban'?

You can do it with the reputation system. If they receive so many negative reputation points you can do a promotion into the banned usergroup. You can do this in default vB, so no installation of mods or hacks would be necessary.

The user could be banned for a set time, or earn a permaban depending on the banned usergroup permissions that you'd set.

Btw, I got this info from here: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=169568

There are some functions that vB does not have by default, however. So, in such cases that you would need to modify your installation of vB, you should refer to http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/portal.php


Also, another good idea I found on another forum I frequent is this:
User Group Changes. (Why I cant create post or thread)
Since the spam has gotten to be a concern for some folks of late, I've made some changes to the user groups we have on this forum.

Registered Users

* All new users default into this group, and will remain in it until they have made one (1) post.
* Cannot create threads.
* Posts are moderated.
* Cannot upload attachments.
* Cannot upload avatars or profile pictures.
* Cannot post polls or vote in them.
* Cannot use reputation functions.


Active Users

* Registered User with a post count of one (1) or more will be promoted to this group.
* All the restrictions listed above are lifted. At this point you're considered to be a useful member of the forum. Your permissions will be exactly what all Registered Users were previously entitled to.


The promotion will not necessarily be immediate. After making your second post, a task will run at :25 past the hour that will promote you from Registered to Active user. Hopefully, this will cut down on the spam without interfering with the day-to-day activities of our productive members. (I've run this manually, so everybody with 2 or more posts has already been promoted.) With the moderation in place, it may be possible to knock the number of posts down to one, but we'll see how this goes first.

Moderators and Administrators will need to remember to check the post queue from time to time.
Sourced from: http://www.codemasters-project.net/vb/showthread.php?t=5889

The admins of the above-linked forum implemented this feature almost a year-and-a-half ago (about a year before my time), and I have not once seen any spam on that site. So, that is something else that you should look into implementing.


you could also try the same thing for members, so we can ban inactives and spammers directly

I don't know about inactive user accounts: it's not unheard of for contributing members to go months without posting something new. So, banning users based solely on inactivity may not be the best solution. When it comes to inactive users, I think that this should be the domain of the mods and admins, since they can see all the stats of any user; whereas, regular users can't.

In the case of spammers, this is definitely a good idea, since everyone knows what an advertisement looks like...and spammers only setup accounts to do just that - spam ads.

Hope this helps :)

[michaelab]

thank you for the reply, this is almost exactly what i mean, but your emphasas on individual posts seems a bit blurry, can you be a bit more clear on that subject?

[michaelab]

seems the floodgates have been reopened, im pretty certain that all the spammers recently are not computers, and just very, VERY useless people

[saburo]

Yeah, the spammers are pretty dumb as to how they post their junk. Everyone knows what it is, so they tend to ignore it. Plus, it'll just be deleted within a few days anyways. The off topic board, however, is still setup to be approved by moderation, before new posts appear, so the flood gates are still closed on that area.

Having said that, however, the admins aren't always on the board, so moderation doesn't happen as frequently as it probably should. Also, since the admins work for DE, they are kept pretty busy with a lot of day-to-day tasks inherent with their jobs, and prevent them from always being online and moderating posts.

The idea, that I had posted from codemasters-project.net, works in part with effective moderation. In other words, all initial new "Registered Users" posts are setup that they have to first be moderated, before they appear (regardless of forum). Then once their post count is greater-that or equal-to 1 (in other words, once they have been approved by a mod or admin), then they are promoted to active status.

Another suggestion, then, might be for the admins to create a "volunteer" moderator user group, with only simple modding permissions (i.e. ability to move, edit and sticky threads/posts). Then pool out to people on this board who they determine to be trustworthy enough to moderate this board, and assign some volunteers. I'm sure that there are a number of people here that could fit in this category (esp. those who want to get into the game industry someday). The game dev wannabes would most likely take the volunteer moderation seriously and keep things in check. For them, it would be a way to get their foot in the door, and something to put on their résumés.