Spam

[GPW]

I’m a Moderator on another Forum (Electronics/amp building) and we get spammed to Death .... Every day is a long list of spammers banned, a continuous struggle to keep up with them ....and apparently , as Greg said, they are very sophisticated , and able to get past all our devices ...
Something we’ve speculated on is the individual spammers appear to work through a much larger system (Evil conspiracy ?) , technically much beyond their capabilities ...

Since we never see any spam here , you guys are doing a Great job !!!

[MtnDon]

Spambots can register on forums easily because the registration pages within any one type or brand of forum software uses the same layout. What type of information being asked for is known to the author of the spambot software. Any popular forum software can be inspected and the spammer software written to fit. Their software searches for forums that run on a particular type, like here it is phpBB. That info is in the footer of every page.

The captcha's are useless. Bots can read those quicker than people. IMO, the key in spam defense is to be able to customize the registration pages. If the location of the fields that needed to be filled with something that has to look like the email address was moved to another position the spam bots would be frustrated by that. That programming is beyond most of us though. Question and response security things work well as long as the logic behind is more cpmplex than asking for the answer to 2 + 3.

For 4 or 5 hundred dollars anyone can buy some very capable spamming software from folks who will also sell you lists of thousands of forums, blogs, etc including what software they run.

[Esteban]

I found lots of spam on TNTTT today. I tried to alert the moderators but that was unsuccessful. Frustrating.

[eaglesdare]

We (admins) are working on this. There seems to be a problem with some Admins being "timed out" when trying to take care of this. But they are aware and they are trying to clean it up. Thanks everyone. Just continue to hit the red flag and we will do what we can.

[Breytie]

There seems to be a server issue on top of that - I often get server ERROR 500 when hitting the flag, typing a coment and hit submit.

[GuitarPhotog]

Is this a "spamstorm" or "Spamageddon?"

I've personally flagged more than a dozen today. I hope you get it solved soon.

I was getting up to 100 link spam posts to my blog and had to put all post under moderation until it slowed to the more normal 1-3 a week.

<Chas>

[rowerwet]

Just a couple ideas, on one forum I'm on, you cannot post links until you post count hits 100, on another all new members are on probation and their post must be approved before they show up, this has kept the spam to a minimum.
Good luck guys! We love the forum and know you put some real work into keeping it running

[Kevin A]

The best thing you can do for us right now is red flag any spam you see. We are painfully aware of their existence and until Mike can change the security settings all the rest of us can do is move or delete the offenders. Thanks for your patience.

[mikeschn]

It's been quite the evening, but I think we got them all. Like Glenn said, it's a daily challenge! thanks for being patient, and thanks to the guys and gals who help, including Kevin, Louella, Doug & Steve.

Mike...

[mikeschn]

I found lots of spam on TNTTT today. I tried to alert the moderators but that was unsuccessful. Frustrating.

Thanks for trying Steve. Unfortunately, because we were at work we didn't see your alerts.

Mike...

[capnTelescope]

Great job, Moderators!

[tony.latham]

Great job, Moderators!

Cap:

How do we know you're not a bot? Didn't you upload a movie of some kinda robot cutting out teardrop walls?

Folks: We need to think about this. Do the math. Maybe we need a poll. Who thinks "Brad" is a bot?

Tony the Human

[mikeschn]

I've added a button under Forum Problems, called "Spammers". This will send an email to myself and the admins that are watching for spammers.

Just include the name of the spammers, and we'll find them and squash them.

Mike...

[bobhenry]

It is so nice to have our forum back !

Thanks to all who helped to make it so ......

Bob

[pchast]

Thanks!