What happened to the forum? > SPAM

[Dragonfly]

Otherwise maybe you can ban users who post several urls in their firsts messages..?

I've seen this measure on several Russian forums and it seems to work - it is also written in the rules one has to read before registering. First post with a link = automatic ban and deletion.

[Steven]

Right, today's spammer was one user, so easy to delete. IP banned.
I noticed 4 chinese user registrations today, all with numbers and letters in email, nothing naughty, so they pass through the new autobanning system.

Anyway, thanks for the reports guys!

As for the CAPTCHA suggestion, I said in an earlier post that it was useless by half 2010, bots were easily getting through that.

[Tim.Wright]

Now I am at a loss handbags as to where I could possibly watches buy cheap shoes

Tim

[Tozza Mazza]

How about...

Say for first 5-10 posts, a user is asked another F1 question, or has a captcha to enter, in order to post.

Could easily get the spambots no?

[blokkie]

preventing spammers from posting is less important then preventing spammers from regging , because without registration a post is not possible.

work on the source of the problem instead of the aftercase is far more efficient IMHO

So knowing _how_ the bots where able to register/create_account is far more important. Once that's defined effective measurements can be taken.

Like in my previous post said ... trace the source ip's and ip-block those in the .htaccess file of the webserver
get for example http://www.spamhaus.org/ services in the forum_registration_mechanisme and it'll help a lot more then 20ish question rotation or captcha_whatever.

Just my 0.5 cents

[strad]

Spammers destroyed my previous site,,,I hate them.
It's tough to ban the IP when they use a floating IP..you just wind up blocking whole blocks of IPs.

[mx_tifoso]

Hopefully they call it a day soon because it's very time consuming to delete so many posts. And most importantly, it's a huge PITA for all of our members.

We just ask that everyone be patient because we are busy as it is yet we try to solve the problems asap.

[strad]

No Sweat...Ain't my first rodeo

[blokkie]

Another tool I use on my servers is fail2ban ( ref http://www.fail2ban.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page )

In short it checks the access logs of the httpd server and based on the rules you set it temp-blocks the ip.
For example , I normally set for httpd access if a user fails 5 times to authenticate or try to register (error 50x) then the ip get's blocked for about 3 minutes.

After 3 minutes the ip is released again .

This has helped a lot against bot's and scripts.

Just my 0,5 cents

[Ganxxta]

Another spam attack...

How about a method xda-developers.com is using: User below 10 Post can't create new Threads, that would prevent such Spam attacks like this "want to see new movie..." bots...

[wesley123]

Then you just move the problem...

Problem is, I have doubts these are bots, these accounts will just spam in another people's topic.

If i'm correct Tomba already took an measure of disallowing usernames containing 'bag' etc. etc., we all know that isnt going to stop it and I think we need more serious measures.

A simple measure would to simply block the indexing of the whole forum by search engines, but allow the homepage to be indexed. By this f1technical would still be able to be found by a search engine, however the forum not.

Another thing is to stop allowing the posting of posts and topics within a set limit. For example a user can only make 1 Thread in the hour, and you can only make 1 post per 30 seconds.

Also I am sure there are a few plug ins to stop such things.

What blokkie proposes seems a good solution, and apart from that also a good security measure, what if one tries to 'hack' my account? He simply can try himselve until he got every combination, since there isnt a limit on the amount of tries. for example after 3 tries the ip is banned for 5 minutes, and after 3 of these periods o the same account, this account is temporarily banned.

[Robbobnob]

how about something simple, if say 10 forum members report a post as being spam, then the post is hidden until mods can verify and their IP temp banned.

that way it is swiftly delt with by the forum.

and to protect other users from being abused, set a post limit. any member with 10+ posts is exempt from IP ban perhaps.

just my two cents

[manchild]

I'd suggest a rule that new forum member can't start threads before he has written predefined number of forum related replies on existing threads, unreported by forum members. That would prevent someone clueless about F1 to register and posts spam.

If new member has urgent need to start a thread, he should be allowed to PM mods or admin, with explanation. That way, again, it would prevent someone clueless about F1 to get trough.

Also, new member wouldn't be able to start more than 1 thread during first 3 days after he has passed previously explained checkups.

[Caito]

Is it possible to make an account unable to post unless they first post on the welcome thread?


That way they have to go the welcome thread say "hi guys im new" and then they'll be able to post normally.

Don't de-index the forum please, I use google a lot to search it. Forum's search is pretty useless compared to what I can do with google.


In an electronic forum you have to solve a really easy circuit to subscribe. Can't you post a random picture of a F1 car and ask, which car is this? And they'd answer Renault, Mclaren, Ferrari. Every user knows that and you would prevent bots. Unless, of course, they're actually humans.

[Steven]

@Caito: Currently there are already f1 related questions, and they were effective only for some time after we ditched the broken CAPTCHA coding

@Caito: De-indexing the forum is not going to happen. Search engines bring 45% of daily visitors, and a large part of that is to the forum.

Preventing new users to post new threads I believe is not wise. I am much opposed to any spamfighting rule that limits the possibilities of bonafide users.

As mentioned, there is a anti-spam measure in place which detects spamwords in usernames, emails, signatures etc. However, after 10 auto-banned users, suddenly users have no more signature, but instead post the links in the post itself. Next step is to extend this detection to the posts' content, as current spammers really like episodes and movies

It really is a difficult problem, thanks for the ideas!