Smart A$$ Spammers

kburkhart84 · Post by **kburkhart84** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 7:08 am

I see today that spammers are starting to get smarter. I'm not an internet guru, but it seems the Spam post catcher didn't work. It was good for a few days, but the spammers are getting smart. I suggest (though I don't know if this forum software supports it) that upon registration, the user has to confirm the text shown in a picture. That atleast would detain the automatic page filling spam machines from getting registered. It isn't too bad of a system because a human shouldn't have problems reading the text, but a machine won't be able to do so as easily. The first topic section is good to get the "stupid" spammers though and was a good idea. If my suggestion is taken and can be done, at least the spammers will have to have a human to register them so atleast part of them won't come back. Any opinions??? or anything I missed. I think spam can be stopped somehow. gamedev.net doesn't have this problem as far as I know, but I don't know how they do it.

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:47 am

We already have this feature enabled (at least it's supposed to be enabled, I did not register lately

) but spammers are still getting through.

sio2 · Post by **sio2** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:48 am

The Spam Catcher was my idea, but I suggested having the catcher as index=1. Trouble is, the Beginners Forum is index=1, so I guess Afecelis would have to move it, breaking all and any links to it.

The posts currently being caught are the ones that post to the first forum on the page, I guess. If the first forum was index=1 it would possibly catch more spam. How long before the spamsters adapted their software to thwart this one can only guess at...

fret_burn · Post by **fret_burn** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 12:22 pm

I had a lot of problems with spammers on a forum i run. I'd get around 50 signups a day so i made it so i had to authorise each person which solved the problem but it was a real pain keeping up with it all.

In the end i tried lots of different forum mods and eventually discovered KittenAuth:

http://www.artsoft.org/phpbb_ka/

I honestly cannot recommend it enough, i've not had a single spammer since and it's simple to install too.

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 1:38 pm

The spam catcher forum would indeed only help with index=1 (that's what I also posted once there, but got deleted

). However, it was also better once we had the Offtopic forum, so it seems as if most spam bots try to be polite and post it into proper forums, so we might rename the spam forum to Offopic and give a proper hint in the caption.

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 3:02 pm

its more likely that they search for common sections.

having and offtopic section would probably only increase the amount of spam.

I've never seen spam anywhere else like I have here why is that?

whatever you guys are doing it's not on other forums so ask anyone it would seem.

kburkhart84 · Post by **kburkhart84** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 3:18 pm

hybrid wrote:We already have this feature enabled (at least it's supposed to be enabled, I did not register lately ) but spammers are still getting through.

It's been a while since I registered too so I wouldn't be surprised if I forgot. Also, something exists that kills the spam since I've never seen it on other forums. Maybe this KittenAuth would do the trick.

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 3:21 pm

anythings worth a shot this is getting out of control with sex ads and stuff.