SPAM-MEISTERS

[Zlatko Waterman]

"Nertijhy" is selling some kind of computer hard-drive cover-up cleanser.

He should be spotted-- and cleansed. From this board.

Ditto to his "buddy" "Kretinchuk"-- selling diet pills.

Ditto to meat-market type-- "Lovely Red" selling "J Lo Butt Sex"

Spot that spam! ( all in General Discussion")

Zap 'em hard!

--Z

[Doreen Peri]

I zap them as I see them. I've been zapping 25+ a day recently.

Thank you but no need to point them out. I access the memberlist when I first come here each and every time, prior to even looking at any posts.

Hoping to get the software upgraded over christmas break. Hopefully that will help.

Again, if you change your mind and want access to zap them yourself, let me know.

Thanks!

[judih]

yes, well, i had the pleasure of bidding those aforementioned fiends the proverbial 'adieu'.

devilish things, with a lot of nerve.

they take over in those between times (when the admins are unavailable). But they leave as soon as we spot em (or soon after).

we're not the only board with this new influx. i see that AC also has a slew of infiltrators.
that's life in the fast lane.

[Doreen Peri]

Thanks for your help, judih! You've been very helpful throughout this spambot ordeal!

Jason's going to help with an upgrade. Hopefully that will help put the brakes on these bots for a while anyway.

Interesting that you state other boards have had an influx of them too recently. I was seriously considering researching using a commercial product like vBulletin and finding out whether the database can be navigated there, thinking that would help.

Life in the fast lane, yep.... I don't know if any software is totally safe from these buggers. It takes the continual upgrades from developers to battle them which means everybody with a discussion board has to keep their software upgraded but they still keep sneaking in.

Worse yet, they "mock" your domain name to send out bogus spam emails. I hate that. Poor studioeight.tv. We've had arbitraryletters @studioeight.tv spamming emails for about a month now. It's not REALLY coming from our server... it's just mocking the name. Our host says there's no way to stop it.... it happens to everybody.

[Doreen Peri]

Forum software was upgraded last night.

Hope this helps with the bots!

[Doreen Peri]

but it didn't seem to work.. still getting them.

sighhhh...

going to the phpbb help forums. Maybe they have some advice.

[stilltrucking]

another one

http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/search. ... Erdickder6

[Doreen Peri]

manomanomanoman!!! now THAT was a nasty one!

Darn thing musta posted 30 posts! Took me 10-15 minutes to find them and delete them all.

If I missed any, please let me know where they are so I can delete them.

OK, so we have upgraded software but it's still not working to keep the bots out so our new member eyelidlessness (aka my son ) is probably going to help with installing 2 or 3 mods....

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=427852

Which ones look like they might work to you?

[stilltrucking]

Interesting thread, seems like a debate between visual confirmation and using a mod.

Marshalrusty said:
I disagree with you on two points:

3. Enable visual confirmation

not the one that comes with phpBB as it's virtually worthless.

I replaced it with a mod that allows me to post simple questions that require thinking to answer
"What is the opposite of hot?"). Easy for a person to answer, not for a script. Another plus to using this mod over the supplied VC is that blind and sight impared people can use it, something they can't do with the phpBB VC. Anti Bot Question Mod:







4. Disable guest posting

Not necessary

Alvo replied

As I said in the very beginning, I'm not making suggestions for which MODs to use.

I've worked on (owned/ran/helped with/etc.) quite a few sites, and I tell you, the visual confirmation works! It certainly seems that there are bots that are able to bypass it, but hundreds are unable to. If you don't believe me, I can post server logs from a number of sites. I regularly maintain ~10 boards (some small, some large), and over half have no anti-SPAM MODs installed because it is not a problem.

As for the questions MOD, unless you regularly change the questions, it is possible to generate them. I took a quick look at it yesterday and I see that some of the questions have to do with generated images, which is good, but some (like the question you posted above about opposites) are quite simple to generate (unless you have a few hundred). The bot could then just refresh the page (up to 5 times) until it gets a question it knows. And that's up to 5 times for each proxy. It should also be noted that the MOD has not been validated.

My point is: don't assume that just because something works for you, it will work for everyone.

It is all Greek/geek to me.

The last three posts on the thread seemed side with Marshalrusty

Not sure it that helps

[Doreen Peri]

Yeah they debate with each other a lot. It's all g(r)eek to me too. *smile*

Still, the list of mods at the bottom of the initial post are worth looking into and we'll select a couple and try them out.

I stopped by there the other day and asked if other sites were experiencing a new attack from bots and somebody answered, "Everybody. And not just phpBB software".... Sigh... it's not only here, m'dear.

What's WRONG with these people that write these programs? I mean, don't they have anything BETTER to do? It can't possibly get them enough business to warrent my headache and the headaches of many others who have discussion board sites.

[stilltrucking]

I will keep my fingers crossed.

Speaking of bots

"What is the opposite of hot?"). Easy for a person to answer, not for a script

Do you remember this thread of traveler13 that befuddled everyone?
http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=7274
I think that is what traveler13 was trying to do.
Write a script for an intelligent chat bot, I thought it was far out, but I did not know enough about computers to keep up.

[Doreen Peri]

No... I didn't remember that conversation. geezzz... thanks for the link. Like I said in my post, I went away for a coupla days and everybody got wacky on me. lol

I don't think traveler was trying to write a chat bot script. was he? Reading it now, it seems it was a simple exercise in nonsense writing

He was joking around... imitating the science fiction possibility of it.

But really there is a chatbot on the aol aim chat thingy... somebody's already doing this... can't remember his name.. i have to ask my daughter.

Traveller is a writer... that's all.. he was playing with words and possibilities in that thread. That's my take on it anyway.

Hope we can get rid of the bot infiltration... fingers crossed here, too. I suspect it will be a constant battle for the rest of my breathing days to attempt to keep up in this media and I will have to hire people to help...

[stilltrucking]

suspect it will be a constant battle for the rest of my breathing days

Take a look at Clay's pack of Pall Malls

inside of the shield reads "Per Aspera Ad Astra" or "Through Difficulty to the Stars"

http://www.answers.com/topic/pall-mall-cigarette

[Doreen Peri]

Umm... OK, call me an idiot, but what in the heck does the slogan on the inside of a pack of Pall Malls have to do with spam bot infiltration at Studio 8? Hmmm?

Are you trying to say that my breathing days are numbered? OK, I'll give you that, but he's the one who smokes the damn things, not me! At least mine have filters on them and I smoke them underneath the stars but hey, I know I need to quit.

Still trying to put together the meaning of your post, still. Is that why your name is still, truckin'?

[stilltrucking]

so much to explain

is this a story challenge

pardon me I am just a chat bot

pretending to be a sock puppett.