13 replies to this topic

[BeefontheBone]

As I'm sure most of you have noticed by now, we're getting an increasing amount of bot activity around here. I'd like to apologise for that (even though it's not my fault!) and ask everyone to be patient with us while we try to deal with it. I'd also like to extend my thanks to the moderators who've been helping us to remove the posts, especially Frodo who I know has been very frustrated with them.

In terms of improving things, we're discussing it - personally I'm not a fan of CAPTCHAs when registering (we have one - albeit a crappy one - already IIRC) for accessibility reasons (not that we're likely to get many blind users, but it's the principle of the thing - they're bad web design) so personally I'd like to avoid strengthening that. If anyone has any simple suggestions, I'd welcome them, but I can't promise anything since we've got nobody around with admin access to the forum functions, unfortunately, and the powers that be don't seem to be paying us any attention at present.

In the meantime, there are a couple of things everyone can do to help out:

Firstly, there's not much point in using the Report Post link to alert us to bots - we'll probably be aware of them as soon as we log on anyway; I for one have the forum as one of my homepages so I tend to be zapping them as soon as I'm online. Using the shoutbox or PMs to alert admins and mods who are online could sometimes be useful though.

Secondly, you can add "users" who post spam to your ignore list - click on their name to get to their profile (you don't even have to open the topic), and on the top right is a grey Profile Options button - clicking on it will give you a menu with an "Ignore User" button, so you don't have to sift through 11 pages of porn to get to the actual topics.

Thirdly, anyone (mod, admin, etc) with the ability to "Purge / Mass Move" topics on their Forum Options menu can chuck topics opened by the same member in the dustbin many at a time.

Again, thanks for your patience in this matter.

Beef

[_r.u.s.s.]

primitive questions like "how many oceans are in there?" or what is the name of the star located in our solar system" (there could be even a google or external link to the exact answer)

i believe not many bots can decrypt the sentence and get the answer for themselves

[Mighty Midget]

Have every newly registered member swear they watched every episode of Hélène Et Les Garçons. Anyone swearing they did is lying and is  most likely a bot.

Ok, seriously. If some of them "bots" are really humans registering before letting some software run riot, then it would be pointless having them answering questions like that.

[Dave]

This is not a solution, but I've seen bot with more than 60 posts, you have to delete their accounts.
If you don't ban them they'll continue to post here regularly...in this way new bots and old ones will increase the Spam activity exponentially.

Only Admins can do that btw.

[A. J. Raffles]

David86, on Aug 12 2008, 02:41 PM, said:

This is not a solution, but I've seen bot with more than 60 posts, you have to delete their accounts.
If you don't ban them they'll continue to post here regularly...in this way new bot and old ones will increase the Spam activity exponentially.

Only Admins can do that btw.

We can't, that's the point. None of us has the power to do this, and the people who do have the necessary admin powers haven't visited the forums, let alone carried out modding actions in absolute ages.

Submins (i.e. Beef, DD and myself) can at least disable posting ability, and that's what we do with bots whenever we can to avoid multi-posting bots, but it's time-consuming - it takes twice the time of simply deleting the threads - and as you say, it isn't really a long-term solution. We need a solution that will make sure that we won't get quite so many bots signing up and posting in the first place, so we won't actually have to delete so many threads.

By the way, if you spot a multi-posting bot whose posting ability still hasn't been disabled for some reason, do point it out to one of the submins.

[Mighty Midget]

If none of the Big Bosses have been around: Have anyone contacted Kosta (assuming he has some saying around here), asking him to promote any of you admins to greater Gods?

[Dave]

Just as I suspected, you can't...I'm sorry to hear that, Admins should nominate successors if they can't take care of the site.
Kosta is really busy, but I'm sure he can find the time to do that if you ask him.

[PrejudiceSucks]

One of the most useful things would be to see if we could give crew and submins the power to moderate every area of the forum. Having bots cooped up in General Troubleshooting or whatever is a bit of a pain in the arse.

Cheers for trying to deal with the problem, though.

[Eagle of Fire]

What's the problem with the bots in General Troubleshooting? I smite them just as much as in any other part of the board...

[Frodo]

I apologise for the latest bout of disgusting bots.  Please be patient, while we try to find a workable solution.  


In the meantime, can I remind everyone about the 'Ignore User' button that Beef mentioned (see top post).  I urge you to use it.  

Quote

Secondly, you can add "users" who post spam to your ignore list - click on their name to get to their profile (you don't even have to open the topic), and on the top right is a grey Profile Options button - clicking on it will give you a menu with an "Ignore User" button, so you don't have to sift through 11 pages of porn to get to the actual topics.

[Shunk Eat Enemy]

Old thread is old and I never come here ever but, I keep getting emails about people PMing here and they are spam bots. I spent 3 hours trying to refigure my password here to login only to discover it was a spambot. FYI I've seen this going on many many other forums with russians mostly spamming porn. The bot I just got again was russian as well.

[CataBina]

I just had one from "Lazy Lurker", announcing New Forum Rules. It took me into the middle of nowhere.

[Frodo]

If you receive any suspicious emails, please list them here for others to see.  Thanks.

[win98]

I found emails for Pm's in my old email account I registered here with. I went to this site carefully in a virtual machine it said to and they want to knw the regisration security codes. They make you type it in for a given picture and i did a few before working this out so the bot reads the image info and knows what to put.