Spam control?

bluelagoon1988 · Mar 6, 2010

Am I the only person that thinks the "Your own pics and movies" section is being flooded by spam?

Master of puppies · Mar 6, 2010

It's been going on for some time Blue, they are legion.

Obedient Little Puppy · Mar 6, 2010

I have reported them, no idea why nothing's been done though

master jey · Mar 6, 2010

there fucking bot rain thet never ends

Sparrow69 · Mar 7, 2010

they are being deleted, and banned, but its a bot, so it just keeps making new accounts.

I've put in to the server for an IP ban, but as you can see, its not happened yet, or their on a rotating ip.

Either way I'm working hard on it, sorry im not on 24 hours a day to catch them when they post, but im busy trying to get this house ready in time for a gathering in june/july.

bluelagoon1988 · Mar 9, 2010

No worries sparrow, I am just happy to know that something is being done even if it's not effective. And I just wanted a little support on my spam bitching

master jey · Mar 9, 2010

there using proxy servers

RFiend · Jul 5, 2010

I've been an admin on a few adult forums for a while...

All of the above are true, to some point. Most of the spam comes from automated scripts run from server farms ALL over the world. It went nuclear about 18 months ago with the release of a Russian spam script that could break the captchas on all forums as well as the Google GMAIL. I struggled for a while and then instituted reCaptcha on our forums, and all went silent for nearly a year. Unfortunately, the Russian programmers haven't been asleep, and starting in Nov 09 I noticed that they'd managed to crack reCaptcha.

We've added another module that checks the e-mail and IP address against the StopForumSpam database, and puts anyone with a HIT in either of those two fields into MANUAL ADMIN ACTIVATION, everyone else is automatically activated. Between reCaptcha and the newer StopForumSpam mod, we've been able to block nearly all of them.

I also have a HUGE "deny from" list in our .htaccess file with every server farm that's been used to spam us. I've blocked a few proxies by doing that, but if they're on a dedicated IP address then I can unblock them on a case-by-case basis. I've only had to unblock a few proxies. With the... EDGY nature of our forums, we recommend that anyone that feels uncomfortable surfing the forum use a secure proxy to keep their ISP or government from watching what they're doing.

If you look around, there are similar mods for vBulletin... I can't attest to their usability since we're on SMF, but I'm sure there's something for vB that will work similarly to our mods.

http://www.google.com/recaptcha
and
http://www.stopforumspam.com

Using them both has drastically cut the load on the mods and admins.

master jey · Jul 5, 2010

God damn Russians!!!
All spamers must die

sebastian · Jul 6, 2010

Sparrow, thanks for the work you put in. I'm not inclined to browse those forums, but I appreciate knowing you're on top of things.

Spam control?

bluelagoon1988

Member

Master of puppies

Member

Obedient Little Puppy

Moderator

master jey

Moderator

Sparrow69

Moderator

bluelagoon1988

Member

master jey

Moderator

RFiend

New Member

master jey

Moderator

sebastian

Active Member

Similar threads