Spammer invasion

[raycow]

It seems to be getting worse than ever lately.

Can the registration procedure be revised to incorporate one of the "human-readable" panels (the kind with distorted letters/numbers) that I have seen used on a lot of other sites? I know this wouldn't be 100% effective because some of the smaller scale spam operations actually use humans, but at least it would cut down on the number of mass-production offenders.

Ray

[bob k. mando]

http://www.captcha.net/

[raycow]

Yes, that's what I was talking about. Now how do we get it on here to block the spammers when they try to register?

Ray

[Bob]

Unfortunately the spammers who are registering are humans. This makes the captcha ineffective. Companies pay people in poor or desperate countries to go around to forums, register and make postings.

You will notice some of the spammers will even make up to 5 postings before introducing their spam. The postings are things like "nice car", "that's a good point", or other meaningless comments. This gets them past first post monitors (not used on our board).

What is being used is an additional question which is easily answered. "What is the first letter of Spam?". We used to have some acronyms like "What is the acronym for Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac?"

The only real good way to stop the human registrations from ever getting to post is to manually monitor the first posting to see that it seems genuine. If it doesn't, then the user's IP can be checked and usually determined to be a spammer. Unfortunately, there is the odd spammer located in the US! The disadvantage is that you need someone monitoring the site almost constantly to ensure reasonable time lapse between submission and posting.

What I do try to do to reduce the problem is in all countries where there are lot's of spammers, I take the IP which has been banned and block the entire area that the IP belongs to. This makes the site inaccessible to someone from the same area or building simply moving to another computer, getting another email and registering again.

a few minutes later...

Mmmm.... I just did a little reading and a good suggestion is to update the question regularly. That would stop it from being programmed into spam block busting programs. So I have changed the question to the bop answer. We'll see what happens over the next few days.

Let's have some suggestions for questions which can be easily answered by anyone who might like to use the board.

[raycow]

Bob, I used to moderate a Yahoo group where all new joins had to have their posts approved until I could see what they were up to. This worked quite well for a relatively small group (only a few hundred members), but may not be feasible for a forum the size of this one.

Having a test question sounds like a good idea as long as the question isn't so technically demanding as to reject people who have a legitimate reason to post here. It's evident from their posts that some of the newbies aren't terribly car-knowledgeable.

Would it be practical to have some kind of arrangement where applicants who can't pass the admission requirement could be put in contact with a moderator to explain their situation? I don't think the spammers are likely to take this next step if they know they will have to deal directly with a site administrator. This could reduce the workload on the moderators while still providing an opportunity to separate the real applicants from the fakes.

Ray

[bob k. mando]

Having a test question sounds like a good idea as long as the question isn't so technically demanding as to reject people who have a legitimate reason to post here. It's evident from their posts that some of the newbies aren't terribly car-knowledgeable.


questions can be phrased so that the answer is contained within the question itself. then, the only 'people' being blocked would be those with a VERY limited grasp of the English language. human spammers with a GOOD grasp of the language would, of course, have no problem with this.

something like:
"The Repco variant of the SBB won the Formula 1 Drivers and Manufacturers Championship in nineteen sixty-six and seven. Which years did a Small Block Buick win the Formula 1 Championship?"

[sharkman]

Hi guys I have a website that has been up since 2008 www.southfloridasharkclub.com and my site has also been under attack the last 5 days or so it done by machine used to penetrate your site under the user registartion .My site master website creator is searching out a way to block out this new threat that we had in the past been able to keep out.Please keep me posted as to your progress I think we will be rid of this new fanfangled crap within the next few days.

[bob k. mando]

this might just be the MOST amusing spam attempt i've ever seen in my life. certainly doesn't lack any chutzpah.

i vote to let him stay.

[krinkov58]

I vote we make "fanfangled" a real word, I like the sound of it!

[Bob]

I have been missing for a while. Most of my time was being used up cleaning up the spammer invasion of Nov. 15, 16, 17, 18! Probably what happened is our question did not get changed for an extended period of time and someone shared the answer with some robots. We were invaded by the usual countries. I have gone through those that registered in that period, about 350 of them, and picked IP's and banned areas. Our registration rate has returned to normal. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted a few good registrations of those days. I hope those people will re register!

The question/instruction we have had for too long was "Place the first letter of SPAM in the box", so the applicant would place and s or S in the box. Pretty effective, and it has been changed!

I am sure you have noticed the spam drop off in the last few days.

Thanks for your help!!!