Spammers, another idea for admin

[jman]

I forget how Bogley is setup, but when you first register is it by a captcha or like a two-word captcha?

If it is, then that explains the influx of spam...

If we can change the captcha to something to a question, such as "what outdoor forum am I on?" and the answer is "bogley", becahse I have read on the vbulletin forums, that this new method is a HUGE improvement over the captchas.

Make sense? It's worth a shot at least, or a trial run for a month or something.

[Cirrus2000]

Yeah, the forum I run is phpBB3, and I had to swap over from a captcha to a Q&A spam filter because we went from having 1 or 2 spammers a day joining up to about 25 a day, last week. Crazy. Q&A challenges are better. What I put on the one I run, a local mountaineering forum, was "Enter a four letter word for the long, skinny, coiled, woven thing that joins mountaineers together when crossing a glacier", looking (of course) for "rope".

[jman]

Yeah, the forum I run is phpBB3, and I had to swap over from a captcha to a Q&A spam filter because we went from having 1 or 2 spammers a day joining up to about 25 a day, last week. Crazy. Q&A challenges are better. What I put on the one I run, a local mountaineering forum, was "Enter a four letter word for the long, skinny, coiled, woven thing that joins mountaineers together when crossing a glacier", looking (of course) for "rope".

Kev, how many spammers did you have after the change? Of course, a human, who is paid to spam will more than likely beat the system still. But the automated crap will be gone....right?

BTW - how's your your foot doing?

[remoteman45]

Please do something. The spammers are ruining the home page

[Cirrus2000]

Kev, how many spammers did you have after the change? Of course, a human, who is paid to spam will more than likely beat the system still. But the automated crap will be gone....right?

BTW - how's your your foot doing?

As I said, about 25/day prior to the change. I only changed it two days ago, but haven't had a single spammer register since then. That forum requires activation, so none of the spam accounts were able to post anything. Most of the spam accounts signing up were from IP addresses from Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Lithuania, that sort of thing. So even humans being paid will have to understand and think about a question. I think it's worth a try, and vBulletin has a version built in, with unlimited number of questions, under Human Verification. Put in a couple of questions, and anyone actually interested will spend the 30 seconds to answer them.

Foot's coming along, thanks! Pain's improving all the time, and I can actually put a bit of weight on the heel (surgery was in the forefoot.) On track for a good recovery in 2-3 months, as promised!

[Sombeech]

The problem is, all of the spammers we've had in the last year are actually human, not bots.

[Cirrus2000]

http://www.bogley.com/forum/showthread.php?23612

This is crazy - the first clue, months ago, was when "Hiedi"'s name was spelled wrong. Terrible grammar, a post about bootcamps, and a link to a bootcamp link farm.

ash08 links to a site related to Hiedi's.

So what are these people being paid, to make it worthwhile for these folks? Crazy...

[Sombeech]

Yeah, it's tough. Sometimes our friendly bogley members will look past the bad grammar and welcome the newcomers (which is a nice thing to do) but there are the signs of spammers, like digging up old posts from years ago, making half a dozen posts all within minutes, short little 1 sentence replies, stuff like that.

The spammers will just search forums for the keywords, in this case it was boot camps of various kinds to post a semi relevant link.

I don't think they're getting paid much, but if they did it a couple hours a day, hit some popular forums, they could get paid a couple hundred a month maybe. It's all on how many clicks they get.

[accadacca]

Yep, it's all SEO work. They search google for websites that rank well for a keyword they are targeting. Then by linking to their clients site from our content it gives them hits and a linkback which increases their google pagerank. Basic link building. SEO 101...

[Sombeech]

mildly watching this guy:
http://www.bogley.com/forum/member.php?19167-QSD1337

Fits the profile, but past the "link minimum" and still no links. Who knows.

[Cirrus2000]

mildly watching this guy:
http://www.bogley.com/forum/member.php?19167-QSD1337

Fits the profile, but past the "link minimum" and still no links. Who knows.

Yeah, curious. And with the "LEET"ness about him... ??

[trackrunner]

another one. all posts about shoes and has a shoe link in the sig

http://www.bogley.com/forum/member.php?19212-romioshiny

[Sombeech]

Got 'im

[trackrunner]

another

http://www.bogley.com/forum/member.php?19218-twoleg

[Sombeech]

another

http://www.bogley.com/forum/member.php?19218-twoleg

Trip Report

[blueeyes]

Spam-O-Matic Statistics

1 Spammer Denied Registration
1 Spammer Permanently Banned
1 Spammy Post Automatically Moderated




love it

[Sombeech]

Spam-O-Matic Statistics

1 Spammer Denied Registration
1 Spammer Permanently Banned
1 Spammy Post Automatically Moderated




love it

That was just installed today

So far it's just plug and play, I'll optimize it when I get some time. Out of the box it will contribute at least something though.

[trackrunner]

another
http://www.bogley.com/forum/member.php?19757-stevenray

[trackrunner]

another potential. looks like the post was edited after a link fail

http://www.bogley.com/forum/member.p...6-BLUEberryBOB

[accadacca]

Check out the ad on the right. Apparently we have a few users reading this book.