I extremely dislike this new wave of spambots that circumvented our masterful thread-creation block by posting replies in threads instead. We're going to have to figure out a more aggressive means of preventing them from posting somehow. Perhaps CAPTCHAs will be in order for those not Better Than Registered Users...
Looking at the latest asshole spambot, I see that they're all coming from a timezone that includes Hong Kong. I'm gonna blame the forum's recent call for communism. Probably too aggressive to block the whole timezone, since at least one forumite currently accesses us from there.
Can't block email this time either, they're all using Gmail. Rats.
Why not just make it so people can't post at all until they've changed their default custom title to something else, and put a message in big red letters about it on the sign-up thing.
Hmm! I don't know if we can make such a provision, but I'll certainly look into it. That said, I think most automated spambot thingies fill in most every available field with something or another, so I don't know if this would actually do the trick.
A lot of forms nowadays throw in a custom field just to throw off the robots, something like "What's 2+2?" or "Type 'Never gonna give you up' in the box below". Robots can't figure that stuff out.
Further Research Later! Turns out vBulletin 3.7 has a Q&A human verification system you can use instead of CAPTCHA. Might be about time to upgrade the ol' software to keep on spambot-fighting.
I've deleted and banned three spam bots just today alone. and at least one every two days, if not more, for the past 3 weeks. is there anything we can do about this?
If anyone knows of a good solution, I'd be glad to hear it. The only surefire way to stop spambots is to require admin/moderator intervention in the registration process, but this is both too manually intensive and too restrictive for my tastes. I appreciate you heading off the spambots at the pass, Jakey, and will do my best to come up with a solution to this issue.
Oh man, I never realized I had banning powers. I hated deleting spam posts without actually getting rid of the user that made them.
The best way I've seen to stop bots is to add an easy IQ question to the sign-up page. Something like "What's six plus 7?". I don't know if they have mods like that in vBulletin, I prefer to use SMF forums myself.
Lately I've been paying attention to the "Newest member" thing at the bottom of the main forum page. If the username/email address/signature/time zone seems suspicious, I run the IP address through this very helpful website:
If a lot of spam is coming from that address, I preemptively ban them. Not really a comprehensive way to stop the incoming spammers, but I figure that we might be able to head off a few at the pass this way.
Comments
I don't get it.
Can't block email this time either, they're all using Gmail. Rats.
I've deleted and banned three spam bots just today alone. and at least one every two days, if not more, for the past 3 weeks. is there anything we can do about this?
Also, blaming the government may help
The best way I've seen to stop bots is to add an easy IQ question to the sign-up page. Something like "What's six plus 7?". I don't know if they have mods like that in vBulletin, I prefer to use SMF forums myself.
http://www.stopforumspam.com/
If a lot of spam is coming from that address, I preemptively ban them. Not really a comprehensive way to stop the incoming spammers, but I figure that we might be able to head off a few at the pass this way.