Spam Accounts?

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Rorie
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Spam Accounts?

Post by Rorie »

hey everybody
i am not sure if to address the issue of all these new accounts created daily with suspicious names with the potential to spam thru a private mesaage with the moderators or to post it publicly.

so i figure i'll do it public so that everyone can have their opinion
now as i have already stated new accounts are being created daily and not while all have the potential to spam. the pckf itself needs to take steps to protect the boards from spam and other obscene and dangerous material. whilst we cannot forcibly keep obscene material from being posted.

we can attempt to stop spam or garbage accounts from being created by taking steps such as setting up an captcha option. where new members must enter a code or solve a maths problem in order to successfully create an account. now i understand that some people are opposed to such a step.

but if the nonsense accounts continue to appear, you have to ask yourself what works and what doesn't? i will stop making my case here. feel free to share your opinions now please
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TerminILL
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Post by TerminILL »

A handful of pertinent points to address most of your concern:
  • No real damage has been done by spammers so far. The worst that's happened is a couple of moderately amusing rubbish posts. This is about as bad as it's going to get.
  • Spammers will almost never use the PM system due to the very nature of forum spam. Forum spammers have no actual intent to sell anything to the board members themselves, but to artificially boost search rankings by posting keywords and links on sites. Therefore, the best way to go about this is making posts which attempt to arouse as little suspicion as possible (not usually successful) or to just have the profiles there - merely signing up for a forum account and filling out the fields with select keywords and links is a success.
  • We can't really install any sort of countermeasure anyway. The actual control of the more technical workings of the forums, i.e. those required to set up a CAPTCHA or such, falls with adurdin if I recall correctly - a man who, with no disrespect intended, has shown incredibly little recent interest in the community or maintenance of these forums beyond a minimum standard of availability. This is largely the reason we're still using phpBB2 here, at least as far as I can tell. Plus, even if we did setup such a thing, manual spammers can still make their way through these.
All in all, while I understand your concern, it seems to me to be largely with a problem that doesn't exist. If anyone else wants to weigh in on the matter, feel free, though.
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mortimer
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Re: Spam Accounts?

Post by mortimer »

:garg :garg :garg :garg :garg
Last edited by mortimer on Sun Jul 12, 2020 20:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Keening_Product
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Re: Spam Accounts?

Post by Keening_Product »

mortimer wrote:As I recall, you have to match two keen monsters?
Glad you raised that - that feature broke a long time ago. I don't think it has been fixed.
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VikingBoyBilly
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

I think it's safe to assume a huge chunk of new users that don't post anything are just lurkers with no urgent interest to post anything. Which begs the question, why did they decide to sign up?
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Shadow Master
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Post by Shadow Master »

Either because they are awaiting the perfect opportunity to attack– I mean chime in, or want to keep track of unread topics and posts. Of course, the latter doesn’t really work very well with the ancient phpBB version used here and everything is marked as read when logging out.
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Post by Roger_Klotz »

I'm guessing some of them are fans of Commander Keen that registered just to feel as a part of the community. They don't feel like they have much to add (or else haven't done forums before), so they haven't posted.
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Flaose
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Post by Flaose »

I inspect every new account. Obvious spam ones are immediately removed, and any that have managed to post have those posts quickly removed as well. As others have said, I think that this is a non-issue.
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tulip
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Post by tulip »

I'd really like to see andy putting that anti-spam system back into function, since I reckon it would save me some time deleting the most stupid spambots.
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Rorie
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Post by Rorie »

tulip wrote:I'd really like to see andy putting that anti-spam system back into function, since I reckon it would save me some time deleting the most stupid spambots.
maybe it is also time that adurdin actually updated the phpbb software following the forum being recently and the corrupted database. the current phpbb board is way outdated, it is time to upgrade the board. if adurdin doesn't have the time or want the effort of maintaining the pckf why can't it be given to someone else?. in case you ask no i do not want the responsibility i no longer have a webhost except for my email thru godaddy i closed my websites down because i simply had no more time for them and that they had been dormat for quite a while. i would post a refferal link for godaddy in case somebody wanted to open up webhosting and move the board then but i am forbidden by the webhoster's rules by doing so if i did i would have my email account terminated
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Post by Eurysilas »

Oh dear, this topic has an ominously familiar ring to it.....

Ah yes! At the other fuddy-duddy place I visit, PureZC, we had the exact same problem. Owner didn't give a damn. Site was rusty at the hinges. Crap fallin' down around our ears (I was on Staff at the time). Can you guess how long it took for us to get our oh-so-wonderful owner to give us the root password so that at least we could maintain the site and forums ourselves?

About 5 years, give or take a year.

I do hope that's not what's happening here. :/
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tulip
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Post by tulip »

eh, I figure we've completed the biggest part of that 5-year-wait already. :crazy
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Re: Spam Accounts?

Post by Keening_Product »

Keening_Product wrote:
mortimer wrote:As I recall, you have to match two keen monsters?
Glad you raised that - that feature broke a long time ago. I don't think it has been fixed.
That seems to have been fixed now, although the page is still throwing up errors (log out and hit register, agree that you're at or over 13 and you will see what I mean). I am unsure if the script works correctly, but the images are back.

That might explain the very recent reduction in spam (depending on when the monster matching feature was restored).
Keening_Product was defeated before the game.

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