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SPAM


hrothgar

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I'm sure most of the forum users have noticed a rather disturbing increase in the amount of SPAM thats getting posted to these forums.

 

I don't suppose that we could cross index the BBO membership list with the forum software permission's list. FOrums users would need to have a valid BBo user ID and use the same ID in both places. We might even require that forums members play a certain number of boards per month or some such.

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We are investigating the possibility of BBO membership before you can join the forum. There certainly has been a lot of new spam, but I hope most of you don't notice it. We delete it fairly quickly. Blocking isp seems useless as they spoof isp's so restrictions like you suggest are probably the best way to go. As I said, we are already investigating.

 

I have found the post with spread-eagle nudity that have popped up a lot lately extremely bothersome, and I have almost decided to remove the ability to post images or links to images to avoid them in the future. But hopefully we can find a sensible solution without going to those extremes. Besides one member seems disappointed when we remove nude pictures of this or that movie star.

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I don't think any member of these forums would want you to leave Frances, nor do I think that was Richard's intent.

 

I think simply having signed up for BBO will get rid of most of the undesired spambots. I am sure there will be a few others that contribute but haven't played on BBO. Perhaps they could send an email request to Ben, Rain, or the other moderators for permission?

 

Whatever the solution, I appreciate the work of the moderators because ultimately they will bear the burden of the time spent on getting rid of spam.

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We might even require that forums members play a certain number of boards per month or some such.

That's me gone, then.

Me too. I'm online a lot but I rarely play because I have other BBO jobs to attend to when I'm there. Besides, being online doesn't necessarily mean that one is always at the computer.

 

I support the suggestion re user ID and BBO membership, but requiring that the members play a certain amount of boards per month makes no sense to me in the context of spam on the forums.

 

Roland

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I don't think any member of these forums would want you to leave Frances, nor do I think that was Richard's intent.

 

I think simply having signed up for BBO will get rid of most of the undesired spambots. I am sure there will be a few others that contribute but haven't played on BBO. Perhaps they could send an email request to Ben, Rain, or the other moderators for permission?

 

Whatever the solution, I appreciate the work of the moderators because ultimately they will bear the burden of the time spent on getting rid of spam.

I am deleting three or so spam bot postings per day, and I see records where I am not the only one cleaning them out. In many cases, the post are fairly harmles with no link to click and no photos. Sometimes they have a link to a blog somewhere, sometimes they have links to very undesirable *.pif of *.exe files (and teh http:// link alows you to hide where the link goes). And sometimes they have explicit nude photos. We will keep them out as soon as we spot them, but I think any rules that are to be added will affect only new members... those already here should be excempt, so Francis is safe.

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I think it will be enough to require that the registering username match a recently used bbo username. We'll see.

That's me gone too then, since I am Walddk here and Walddk2 when I'm online (yes, I have other Walddk accounts, but only during VG broadcasts and they are always invisible).

 

Roland

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OK, lets try this. I changed the code to only allow new forum usernames if the forum username matches an existing bbo username

 

With luck that will keep out the automated spam attacks we've been seeing. I can't think of any decent way to keep out the human spammers

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With the new registration requirement, we hope that most of the spam will stop. Since it was inacted i have only found one SPAM. It was by a "member' who joined on november 16th. I am not sure how many more stealth spammers there are, but we will remove them (and their post) when they strike. Thanks to all of you who report them when they show up... none stay very long!!!!
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  • 2 weeks later...
I just wish we knew what the bot was trying to do...

 

This unscratched itch is almost as annoying as the original SPAM

 

Agreed, it doesn't make much sense since it didn't need to send posts or anything to farm email addresses and then inform us of the glory of penis extensions or of untold wealth in Nigeria that with your small help I will give you 25%

 

The one thing I can think of is that after enough trust was built it would insert a URL in a post with some truly nasty worm on it.

 

Sean

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