Spambot Alert!

1356710

Comments

  • edited June 2008
    These aren't even nice spambots. They're the kind who are promoting a service which uses Chinese slaves to build up your WoW level and/or simply stealing your account. Hell, isn't the whole fun of WoW levelling up, getting better and nicer items and quests?
  • edited June 2008
    They've been coming back for awhile now. It'll take some thinking to figure out how to prevent them from posting.
  • edited June 2008
    Can you limit new members from posting anywhere but one specific thread until X number of posts? Like, make a "spam thread" and force all new recruits to have 10 posts there before they can move on to other threads.
  • edited June 2008
    Or that capital-lookup that one guy suggested that one time.
  • edited June 2008
    Or mandatory stool samples. Ship a box o' shite to Mario before you can post.
  • edited June 2008
    It's actually not that hard to make money in WoW. All you have to do is take some time out of your day to carefully analyze the market in your server via the auction house and find out which items are in high demand, usually trade goods like ores and cloths. Find out the average price on your server and then occasionally check for discrepancies in price. Buy low and sell high.

    Actually, on each server I play on, I have one low level guy with mining. I have him make rounds collecting copper ore, then I sell it for 5-10 gold, depending on the server. If I send the proceeds to one of my low level guys, they'll typically have enough to live comfortable for a while.

    But I've been known to speculate in the copper ore and wool cloth markets.

    ... although, I might not be leveling as fast. Although I do jump around a lot between characters, my first character, a warrior I started a few months ago, is still lev. 37. But he does have about 200 gold.

    Edit: What was this thread about again?
  • godgod
    edited June 2008
    200 at 37? Way more than I had. For making gold, you can just get to 70 and do daily quests, easily 100g in under an hour. Until you run out of quests for that day.

    Uh, yeah, spam is bad.
  • edited September 2008
    In on-topic news, I've just witnessed a spambot make 25 posts.

    This is crazy.
  • edited September 2008
    It's funny, this bot actually qualified to become a "Better Than Registered Users" so it was marginally harder to finally ban him.
  • edited September 2008
    You've been dealing with a lot of spambots recently. You have my gratitude, hardworking ser.
  • edited September 2008
    What we need at registration is a question that asks if you're a spambot.

    It's bulletproof. It can't possibly fail.
  • edited September 2008
    "If you are a spambot, please confirm your email here:"

    email: |_________________|


    Or what would be even better:

    "If you are not a spambot please leave the field below blank and click on the image to continue. Do not click the next button."

    (There's a text field and an image with the crazy letters. There is an invisible flash gadget laid over the top of it that loads the form data, makes sure the one field is blank and continues the process.)
  • edited September 2008
    Well, whatever is going to be done it has to wait until Mario has internet at home again.
  • edited September 2008
    All you need to do is implement this. Problem solved.
  • edited September 2008
    All you need to do is implement this. Problem solved.

    Heh heh heh...
  • edited September 2008
    Eh, let IT deal with it.

    Wait.

    Shit.
  • edited October 2008
    Can we maybe get one of those little "write the letters in the picture in this box" thingy for registrations? We seem to be getting hit pretty hard by our robot overlords lately.

    I would imagine thats a feature of vbulletin, but really I have no idea how the thing works so it could actually be a pain in the ass to implement.
  • edited October 2008
    Actually, we already have this enabled, but CAPTCHA has been largely exploited and worked-around. We just have to wait for vBulletin to include more advanced forms of registration prevention, unfortunately.
  • edited October 2008
    Yeah, sorry about the Shanghai massage ones. That one was probably my fault.
  • edited October 2008
    mario wrote: »
    Actually, we already have this enabled, but CAPTCHA has been largely exploited and worked-around. We just have to wait for vBulletin to include more advanced forms of registration prevention, unfortunately.

    That's only true if you can't go messing with the code yourself and adding some crazy spambot catcher method of your own into the process.

    I suppose vBulletin isn't some open source bit of code though.
  • edited November 2008
    Porny will always be my favorite.
  • edited November 2008
    No way, nothing will EVER beat the on-topic Wikipedia bot. I even tried to keep him around, but he hasn't posted in awhile. COME BACK WIKIBOT!!!
  • edited November 2008
    I LOVED that guy! What ever happened to him? Was he so offended that Mario took the links out of his signature that he left?
  • edited November 2008
    Hey, I just wanted him to follow the rules like everyone else. If that cramped his style, I hope he found a more inviting community elsewhere.

    Still, I'm gonna miss that guy...
  • edited April 2009
    What's with the surge of spambots lately? I've seen at least three separate spam bots today at work.

    Also, some of these spambots seem to have a distinct Chinese origin. Is this my fault?
  • edited April 2009
    I'm not sure what the problem is. I try to catch as many as I can, and I ban a ton before they even post anything. And yet the keep coming.

    Mario, is there some way that all new registrants would require approval from a mod or something before they could post? I wouldn't mind slogging through it all if it meant that I didn't have to wake up to find 6 new spambots that have posted so much that they actually get the ability to post new threads.
  • edited April 2009
    Honestly, just add a form field where you have to copy a sentence into it or something during registration.
  • edited April 2009
    Can you require them to do something special, like post in the introductory thread first before posting somewhere anywhere else?
  • edited April 2009
    Yeah, have an image that says (in words) "two plus two equals" and have them fill out the answer, something like that.

    EDIT: It's a win-win anyway because hey, if an actual person can't figure that one out why do we want them in our little forum?