Spamming on my message board

Rorie · Post by **Rorie** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 9:51

i recently setup a smf message board on my mambo site it is still in early stages i have 2 honest members but the rest i have deleted due to the fact have been spamming my board with vigara & other garg it is not acceptable there is a stick topic explaining the rules but they cannot care less it seems but they are annoying me despite the fact that i delete their accounts. ban them via proxy & deleting the spam thread. i did nothing wrong in setting up my board. i just want the abuse to stop is there anyway i can prevent spammers on my board & not deter future members?

Galaxieretter · Post by **Galaxieretter** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 10:26

You need to put one of those automatic image creation things. The "Type in the letters you see in the image" trick. That should take care of it.

Most of those are simply bots, so even if you delete and ban their accounts or post the rules it doesn't matter because a human doesn't even type those things out.

Bonevelous · Post by **Bonevelous** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 10:30

Galaxieretter wrote:You need to put one of those automatic image creation things. The "Type in the letters you see in the image" trick. That should take care of it.

Most of those are simply bots, so even if you delete and ban their accounts or post the rules it doesn't matter because a human doesn't even type those things out.

Man, you beat me to it.

They might be spam bots. Do you have something like this...

TYPE THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOX BELOW

A*2HJ0

...To stop them?

Genius314 · Post by **Genius314** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 14:01

They're called captchas. And they generally don't work to get rid of spam.
The problem is that now spam companies are paying real people to type in the captchas all day - after they're in, a bot will start posting with the account.

What you need is a custom-made thing, maybe similar to the one we have on this forum (where you have to match the two Keen sprites). That seems to get rid of 99% of spam. I guess less-than-minimum wage isn't enough for the workers to bother figuring that stuff out...

And Rorie, of course they're not going to follow your forum's rules - they're bots.

Galaxieretter · Post by **Galaxieretter** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 15:05

If that's true that's seriously messed up.

Genius314 wrote:What you need is a custom-made thing, maybe similar to the one we have on this forum (where you have to match the two Keen sprites).

But what happens if you want to make a general, open forum? Thinking up vague Commander Keen questions is a good idea for a Commander Keen forum but you can't really do things like that everywhere.

There are forums all over the internet that aren't being spammed. There has to be a way to make it not happen. Are there pruning codes out there for forums that will block posts about certain things? You could make it so that you know... instead of censoring "swear" words you would put in things like "Viagra" and such so that if someone tries to put it in a post or topic that it will be blocked from posting, redirecting back to the page where you have to type it in, with a little error explaining why. Really, all you need to do is run the check on the first post in a new topic when it's submitted.

Post by **Levellass** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 3:37

It's true, sad though it may be. Asia is especially popular for things like this, since IT people have plugged in to the idea of using human brains as part of their strategy. On the upside, this allows incredibly accurate translations into difficult languages to be done (The text is broken up and sent to correspondents who know that language and can translate it.) as well as problem solving and other such 'fuzzy' areas, but the downside is that spammers et al can use the same tactics.

There are a number of options for an open board, depending on what you want to do, the type-the-text-in-the-image is worth a shot as it is not totally hopeless (Not everyone can afford human employees.) and partially specific questions (Who is the president of... who invented the lightbulb... Click on all the fish pictures...) can remove a lot of spam. (Surely your board will have SOME focus? I've never seen a board that's just 'Hey, we're about everything!' before!)

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 4:05

I've seen two non-topical forums, but since they're friends-inviting-friends it usually comes out with whatever common interests the people have, even if it isn't specifically a Let Us Talk About This type of thing.

Rorie · Post by **Rorie** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 4:30

so what method would be effective in stop people spamming my board?. i'm confused

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 5:26

I don't know of any anti-spam methods, you don't know of any anti-spam methods, the internet knows of anti-spam methods, so google it.

VikingBoyBilly · Post by **VikingBoyBilly** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 14:11

Deltamatic wrote:I don't know of any anti-spam methods, you don't know of any anti-spam methods, the internet knows of anti-spam methods, so google it.

This quote should be archived for antiquity

"Anti-spam-methods" can be replaced by any other phrase.

Commander Spleen · Post by **Commander Spleen** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 21:57

It actually sounds like a good line for a chorus.

HoboRed · Post by **HoboRed** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 0:05

Genius314 wrote:They're called captchas. And they generally don't work to get rid of spam.
The problem is that now spam companies are paying real people to type in the captchas all day - after they're in, a bot will start posting with the account.

What you need is a custom-made thing, maybe similar to the one we have on this forum (where you have to match the two Keen sprites). That seems to get rid of 99% of spam. I guess less-than-minimum wage isn't enough for the workers to bother figuring that stuff out...

And Rorie, of course they're not going to follow your forum's rules - they're bots.

That Keen Sprite thing actually works? It looked like a bogus security check to me.

Genius314 · Post by **Genius314** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 2:19

HoboRed wrote:That Keen Sprite thing actually works? It looked like a bogus security check to me.

Well consider how often you see that... not very. So how many bots could get past it? And how many underpaid employees would actually bother figuring it out? Not many. It works.

Post by **KeenRush** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 13:33

Things like that work the best, I'd say. Especially against spam bots. Well, there isn't really stopping any human posting spam...

VikingBoyBilly · Post by **VikingBoyBilly** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 14:38

Hamsters like human made spam.