More Spam?

[mskeel]

Has this board been assaulted by more spam recently or am I just imagining things? It just seems like over the past few weeks there has been more spam posts than normal (more than zero and sometimes two or three at once).

Any thoughts? Mods, you probably know best. Is there a spam wave or is it just me?

 

[Nerseus]

Ive noticed it as well - probably 1 to 3 a day. I just tried to register as a new user and there is the "advanced" feature of typing in the text that displays in a picture, all "mooshed" around. That helps prevent automated registrations so Im guessing the spammers are 1 person at a time. I would guess theyre individuals getting paid to spam boards such as these.

I believe they still must register with a valid email address and wait for that, which further indicates individual spammers versus some automated process. Just my guess...

-ner

 

[techmanbd]

This happens on a vehicle forum I admin. I belive they get paid to do this. We get the same exact spam by different email addresses, and alot of times, it is a close email name, such as abc123@whatever.com, then next time it is abc124@whatever.com. It gets very frustrating to keep the board clean from this crap.

 

[snarfblam]

If they sign up with e-mails on the same domain, is it possible to block specific domains for email addresses? For example, some sites (not vB boards in particular) dont allow certain domains such as yahoo/hotmail for signing up.

 

[mskeel]

CAPTCHA is extremely effective against bots and other automated attacks. Its been so long that I dont remember but does this board send an email challenge to verify the sign up? What about blocking IP addresses?

 

[techmanbd]

CAPTCHA is extremely effective against bots and other automated attacks. Its been so long that I dont remember but does this board send an email challenge to verify the sign up? What about blocking IP addresses?

Your IP changes if you have a basic account when you log on.


Also blocking certain type of email is possible. The one site I am on, we would see something and I would do a check to make noone else was on that type and would block any email addresses with the same ending. But then they get smart and started using hotmail or yahoo accounts. Problem with that is we would lose alot of legitimate posters. I use a yahoo account.

I believe the spamming on forums have increased, because the email blocking is getting much better.

 

[alp0001]

Ive noticed it as well - probably 1 to 3 a day. I just tried to register as a new user and there is the "advanced" feature of typing in the text that displays in a picture, all "mooshed" around. That helps prevent automated registrations so Im guessing the spammers are 1 person at a time. I would guess theyre individuals getting paid to spam boards such as these.

For those that arent aware, there are tools out there for these <insert your pleasure> out there. These tools have the capability of reading these scrammbled pictures (pictocodes).

Change the process in registration, then you will avoid spammers...

 

[mskeel]

These tools have the capability of reading these scrammbled pictures (pictocodes).

Im sure you could make the images sufficiently scrambled such that a human could read it while a computer could not. The way around this (in a pseudo automated way) is to set up some kind of a front that feeds the scrambled images from the target site through a high traffic website (usually pr0n) and collect image to display mappings. If everything goes well youll collect money for the content in addition to cracked CAPTCHAs. Its cheap and effective.

Of course, this will only work in cases where there is already a vulnerability on your site such as the ability to algorithmically determine which scrambled image is displayed (so you can look up the correct response in your mapping).

Your IP changes if you have a basic account when you log on.

True...I forgot about dynamic IP addresses. And banning an IP block would just be malicious.

 

[alp0001]

As Im not about to give the site any business, I modified their advertised picture. Attached is an example of pictocodes that one program seems to be able to bypass:

 

[mskeel]

I doubt there is an example of every CAPTCHA on the internet in that image...

Anyway, I was just curious about the surge that seemed to be going on. The board seems more than amply secure and I think the mods do a great job of removing what little junk manages to work its way on to the board before it becomes too obtrusive.