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Battling the Spammers

Yancy Street Gang Dec 27 2006 09:42 AM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Dec 28 2006 09:15 AM

KC and I were both, independently, looking into ways to battle the spammers that have recently begun to infest this forum. In the process, I learned a little bit about what's been going on. We had originally thought that requiring new members to type a "code" to prove that they're human beings would stop spambots. (A spambot is a computer program that finds forums and automatically enrolls in them.) That probably has worked, to an extent, but it turns out that it's not just "bots" that have been pestering us. Apparently these porno and enhancement and mortgage refininancing sites actually hire people to enroll in forums and post links back the the sites. And that's how they've been getting through and posting here. Another enticement is the Memberlist that you can see at the top of the forum's home page, just to the right of the Search option. By enrolling in a forum, the new "member" gets a hyperlink to the porno/enhancement/etc site on that Memberlist page. A "spider" (a computer program that crawls the web) from Google, or Yahoo, or other search engines, would find that link. The search engines operate under the assumption that better pages have more sites linking to them, so the more links to a site, the higher up it appears in search engine results. This means that when somebody from an incest site, for example, enrolls in the CPF, they're doing it to increase the number of external links to that site. Their goal is to do this on hundreds, or thousands, of forums, so that when some degenerate searches on "incest", their site will appear above the others, because the thousands of links will be interpreted as an indication of popularity, and therefore, quality. We don't as yet have a way to stop people from joining and getting their link on the Membership list. As they pop up we'll have to keep deleting them. However, we do have a way to stop them from posting their links in the various forums, which we've been seeing more and more of lately. The board software allows for a kind of Group security. I've configured each of the forums on this board to only allow posts by approved group members. I've also added all recent users to the Group, so everybody's permission should be unaffected. You should be able to create new threads and post replies to existing ones just like you've been doing. However: I may have missed somebody. (If I did, don't take it personally. I didn't intentionally leave anyone out.) If you find that you can't post or reply to threads, please contact me or KC by PM or e-mail. We'll add you to the approved group and then you'll be able to participate as before. Unfortunately, new members will now have to clear an additional hurdle; they'll have to convince the admins that they're legitimate so that they can be added to the group. We're not sure yet how that's going to work, but since the majority of new users lately have been spammers, we figure it's better to close the door than leave it wide open.

Johnny Dickshot Dec 27 2006 10:10 AM

Bravo

ScarletKnight41 Dec 27 2006 10:24 AM

Thanks guys!

Frayed Knot Dec 27 2006 10:27 AM

]Unfortunately, new members will now have to clear an additional hurdle; they'll have to convince the admins that they're legitimate so that they can be added to the group. We're not sure yet how that's going to work Perhaps an admin-sent Email or PM could be sent to new signees who look like they're legit (ie. no spam-looking links attached) letting them know that a reply is neccesary before posting can begin. Those who replay could then be added to the list(s) while the obvious spammers and those not replying are deleted. Granted it's not a smooth as an automatic system would be but, seeing the small pct that actually are interested posters, the emails combined with the restricted lists would keep out the spam w/o chasing away actual new members.

Edgy DC Dec 27 2006 10:34 AM

Dear New Poster, Who was traded for Jim Fregosi? Sincerely, Your Crane Pool Administrators

Rockin' Doc Dec 27 2006 01:25 PM

I would like thank the administrators for their diligence in making this an enjoyable place for members to discuss baseball (and life in general) with one another. Keep up the good work.

cooby Dec 28 2006 06:25 AM

I have a question. Even if they can't post, their website link will still be available to all on their profile, so won't that still count towards their smarmy little quota? I'm wondering if you could make it so there is no way to link a website to your profile. I know that some of you here have genuine links, and you would lose that, though But it would foil their evil plan....

Edgy DC Dec 28 2006 07:52 AM

We're trying. Only six kills this morning.

Yancy Street Gang Dec 28 2006 09:15 AM

cooby wrote: Even if they can't post, their website link will still be available to all on their profile, so won't that still count towards their smarmy little quota? Yes, unfortunately. We're getting rid of the worst situation, which is their links popping up in our threads. But they are still able to get their links on the Memberlist. cooby wrote: I'm wondering if you could make it so there is no way to link a website to your profile. I know that some of you here have genuine links, and you would lose that, though But it would foil their evil plan.... As Edgy said, we're trying. But I'm not sure that we have the ability to do that.

cooby Jan 01 2007 12:55 PM

You guys, with all due respect, it's just getting worse

KC Jan 01 2007 01:17 PM

We're exploring other options, but for at least the next couple of weeks what we got is what we got. Like I've repeated before (from a wise poster), "don't look at the blue bar" -- clean shaven or not ....

Edgy DC Jan 01 2007 01:24 PM

I'm not sure what happened this morning that made it worse. I gave permissions to what seemed like a legit poster just now. That's cool.

Yancy Street Gang Jan 01 2007 01:24 PM

cooby wrote: You guys, with all due respect, it's just getting worse Has anybody posted any SPAM messages within the forums? I haven't seen any, and if it's not happening, then we've taken a big step forward. But yes, we are getting a lot of phony registrations. I myself have deleted about 15 of them in the last couple of days, and I'm sure there are more that were deleted by Edgy or KC. We can't stop them yet, but we can still swat them out of the way. If they're not able to post messages, though, we've eliminated the greater of the two evils.

KC Jan 01 2007 02:09 PM

EDC: >>>I'm not sure what happened this morning that made it worse.<<< Depravity doesn't do holidays. YSG: >>>we've eliminated the greater of the two evils.<<< Agreed. I don't mind the swatting, I do it without thinking about it most time ... like a routine chore.

cooby Jan 01 2007 02:34 PM

Yancy Street Gang wrote: ="cooby"]You guys, with all due respect, it's just getting worse Has anybody posted any SPAM messages within the forums? I haven't seen any, and if it's not happening, then we've taken a big step forward. But yes, we are getting a lot of phony registrations. I myself have deleted about 15 of them in the last couple of days, and I'm sure there are more that were deleted by Edgy or KC. We can't stop them yet, but we can still swat them out of the way. If they're not able to post messages, though, we've eliminated the greater of the two evils. Yancy, again, I'm not blaming you admininstrators. I'm just saying, when you check in once or twice a day and both times you find that a dripping female body part is your newest member, it's a real turn off. I have confidence that eventually it'll all work out.

Yancy Street Gang Jan 01 2007 02:51 PM

Our users have posted a total of 36142 articles We have 154 registered users The newest registered user is Dripping Female Body Part

KC Jan 01 2007 03:11 PM

Part of me wonders if someone is just busting our balls ... in addition to the oddball registrants. "don't look at the blue bar"

metsmarathon Jan 01 2007 05:39 PM

maybe she's just got a runny nose...

ScarletKnight41 Jan 01 2007 05:53 PM

Or she didn't let her nail polish dry.

Edgy DC Jan 01 2007 06:57 PM

KC wrote: Part of me wonders if someone is just busting our balls ... A dry, male part, I trust.

cooby Jan 04 2007 03:32 PM

We should start a "HA HA Spammin' Newbie, you can't post" thread

cooby Jan 07 2007 08:18 PM

Oh! At long last, a premature ejaculation expert!

KC Jan 07 2007 08:30 PM

Give us a break, that guy got prematurely deleted ...

Yancy Street Gang Jan 07 2007 08:56 PM

cooby wrote: Oh! At long last, a premature ejaculation expert! Are you looking for one?

cooby Jan 07 2007 10:24 PM

No, but we are sadly lacking one here, and one finally showed up.

Frayed Knot Jan 07 2007 10:41 PM

Our latest spammer/registrant claims (right below his/her porn-link) that his interests are gold & sex, perhaps not coincidently the two things you don't have to be good at to enjoy.