Spammers

Today I have had to delete and number of threads and ban two spammers, there are many ways to slow these pricks down but we will never stop them.

 

Do we need a delay on posting rights for new members?

who has the time to perform such things? what spam do u encounter here virgil

Today we had about six posts in consoles selling shoes from China then some other fool later in the day posted twice selling other shit from china.

Today I have had to delete and number of threads and ban two spammers, there are many ways to slow these pricks down but we will never stop them.

 

Do we need a delay on posting rights for new members?

 

No

 

what we have here is a forum, thus with forums we have this type of thing happening.

If you want to run a forum you have to be prepared deal with these and delete such activities, that is why you are a mod, that is your job, otherwise don't put your hand up for such, I mean that nicely.

 

If you have a delay in posting for new members then you won't get any new members I feel and then this becomes a private club so to speak, and who wants that.

Lets keep it public, freedom of speech is our right, don't turn it into a dictatorship please.

Putting a delay on posting rights for new members might not prevent spam, but I'm sure it will reduce the volume and frequency.

 

Matthew

Are you able to ban entire IP blocks? Either via the forum software, or at your provider/firewall level?

 

There are a number of sites that document which IP ranges belong to which countries. Blocking known bad countries (China and a lot of Eastern Europe seems to be hotspots) can slow things down.

 

I'll try and find the site that maintains the lists and post it here.

No

 

what we have here is a forum, thus with forums we have this type of thing happening.

If you want to run a forum you have to be prepared deal with these and delete such activities, that is why you are a mod, that is your job, otherwise don't put your hand up for such, I mean that nicely.

 

If you have a delay in posting for new members then you won't get any new members I feel and then this becomes a private club so to speak, and who wants that.

Lets keep it public, freedom of speech is our right, don't turn it into a dictatorship please.

 

 

I agree, I was just putting it out there for ideas or suggestions on how we slow them down.

I agree, I was just putting it out there for ideas or suggestions on how we slow them down.

 

I vote for doubling Virgil Tracy's current pay from the forum :)

 

Really, I think a delay is appropriate. These people are hit and run - so deleting accounts mean nothing as they won't be back... Therefore if they have to wait, they will just go find another forum.

 

Hmmm forum spamming must be such a fulfilling job...:rolleyes

I vote for doubling Virgil Tracy's current pay from the forum :)

 

 

Twice Zero is.... Zero!

Twice Zero is.... Zero!

 

I will share half of this pay increase with you:D

ip block china! lol

 

putting posting delays on new members is a bad idea, how unwelcoming would it be?

plently of mods here to ban the lil fuckers b4 they do much anyway

Personally I think some sort of delay is a good idea. The vast majority of new members don't register and post straight away anyway. I'm sure a small message explaining why the new member can't post before x amount of time would be understood.

 

Regards,

 

Johns-Arcade.

i think new posters need the privilege and obviously are super keen to learn and have questions answered.

"enter the character" is a massive PAIN in the ASS...

ip block china! lol

Don't laugh - you don't know just how often I do this for businesses! If as a business you don't do any dealings with Asia outside of a few emails (particularly if email is handled by someone else), blocking entire countries that have a high percentage of SPAM coming out of them like China, Russia, most of Eastern Europe, and even places like Greece and Italy of late can knock your SPAM down to a fraction of what it was.

 

OK, on to the good stuff. Blocklist.org used to be the place to get the good stuff, which was maintained by the peerguardian guys. Sadly they let the domain expire and I can't find a mirror.

 

But there are other sites, for example:

 

http://www.ipdeny.com/ipblocks/

http://blacklists.linuxadmin.org/

 

I'm not sure what level of control you guys have either through the forum software or at the physical OS level. If you need a hand generating firewall rule lists for Linux/iptables, let me know and I'll write up a script for you that will take an IP-list like the above as input and generate a firewall for you on the fly.

 

There's also your /etc/hosts.deny file which you can deny traffic on a per-service basis, where you can just add lines like:

 

ALL: 58.14.0.0/15, 58.16.0.0/16

 

... and so on would block all services from those IP ranges (again, taken from the links above for addresses belonging to China). Although firewalling it via IPTables with a DROP rule would be better, as your host would look like it was down to the spammer, rather than them getting an "access denied" which tells them it's up, but they've been blocked (which can sometimes tempt them to try other methods).

 

Anyways... there's a start, and again I'm not sure how much control you've got over the box. Maybe even your web hosting guys can help? Either way, PM me if you need a hand.

Hmmm forum spamming must be such a fulfilling job...:rolleyes

 

Looking at the densly populated asian countries, im guessing itd probably be one of the better night jobs... apart from gold farming. :P

Edited September 8, 2008 by shaunske
I un dun gotta lern too spel.

Most of the time it's done by automated programs, not people.

id like to throw to two bobs worth in and i reckon a post ban of say 48 hours would do the trick for new comers

 

 

i think a post ban of 1 week is a bit too much.

 

 

just my thoughts...

 

ok... flame away

 

:sleep

What if we need shoes from china? hehe

.... i reckon a post ban of say 48 hours would do the trick for new comers

 

 

i think a post ban of 1 week is a bit too much.

 

 

Yeah , I second this.

This should the most you would want to wait if you were a new member joining a forum. A new member would probably forget about coming back if you made it one week.

 

How about only letting them have a post in the introduction forum to say hello , untill the 48 hrs is up ?

 

I dont know if that kind of thing is possible ??

A confirmed opt-in process will weed out any bots etc , this forum software is already capable of sending a confirmation request to all new sign ups , meaning that if someone signs up they have to click a link and fill in a confirmation string before they are able to post .

To do this they will need to sign from a real address because that is where they will receive the please confirm email from AA .

Spammers like doing things the easy way and rarely use a real email address so this will be to much trouble.

 

The guys deleting these spam will notice that most spam even advertising the same products will be from a different IP and email address , the above prevents just about all of it.

Banning single IP addresses and email addresses will do absolutely zero to prevent spam.

 

The 24 or 48hr wait period for new posters will turn a lot of non members off joining , but rate limiting new users post until a they have made X amount ( say 5 posts ) is also a big turn off for spammers . , again this is part of the Forum software options .

Only just seen this thread. if you put a 48 hour delay on posting, I personally wouldn't have come back, you're only going to drive away potential members. I'd look at other solutions to solve this