Spam in the can

[MBobrik]

I am almost certain following forum accounts are spamers, or, more likely, products of the same spambot which has apparently our forum in its crosshairs.

IvoryButle
pletcherpcn
EdgarSSKHz
SusannHaro
TreyBYRKr
GabrieBodi
AnnisStGeo
RandyGurne
MairaPaqui
MuoiGascoi

They can be recognized easily - all have the 'homepage' field in their profile filled with some commercial or porn site, all have nicknames generated according to the same pattern. Some have Bio filled in with bland generated stuff obviously using the same template, and were never seen at KSP forum, don't post except various spam in the "Chatter' sub-forum, or nothing at all.

[deljr15]

4 days ago I changed the registration captcha to ReCaptcha. This has drastically slowed down the attack. Before the change I was banning a spam bot daily. I believe that I have only banned one sense the change.

I too have been wondering on those users. I had considered placing them on restricted access, however they have yet to make a post.

I hadn't checked their "homepage" but I will start. Those that are obviously fake I will place on the ban list.

[deljr15]

After pruning the log. We have 15 users remaining. I apologize to anyone I may have banned that didn't deserve it. If you are one of these people please let me know and I will correct.

Another thought I had, that I would prefer to not use, is to have all registered users start in a group that can not post. Only after a mod reviews the user and approves will it become active.

This option will make a larger workload for me and lordQ.

Anyone have some other ideas?

[MBobrik]

One question more ... could you purge the spammers from the member list completely ? It does not make much sense when we got a N page member list with almost all banned

[cactus]

(12-30-2014 12:23 PM)deljr15 Wrote:  Another thought I had, that I would prefer to not use, is to have all registered users start in a group that can not post. Only after a mod reviews the user and approves will it become active.

I'd vote against this. A better version of this would be to make their posts premoderated until the account is verified.

[deljr15]

(01-13-2015 12:47 AM)cactus Wrote:  I'd vote against this. A better version of this would be to make their posts premoderated until the account is verified.

I like that idea, and have created a new user group "Activated". All new users will land in "registered". If no posts are made in 1 week I will delete the user.

I will also put together a better statement and post in announcements.

Additionally I have deleted anyone on the ban list.

[MBobrik]

Our spambot has just evolved. "EssiePeral"
from his profile...

Date of Birth: Hidden (34 years old)

his obviously generated "Bio" : "43 year-old Geologist Ramsey from Port Credit, really loves jogging, facebook marketing and poker. Has enrolled in a global cokntiki trip. Is qite ecstatic particularly about going tto Kong Family
Mansion in Qufu."

Emphasis mine.

His homepage is of course facebook.com, and his or should I say its "introduction" was essentially a bait ad for facebook.com

Seems a human is supervising it, though, so when he read about the post an introduction into "Welcome abroad" section, he changed it to generate an "introduction". That will make any further defense much harder.

[HenryRasia]

This spambot is creating welcome posts with the same layout to advertise for different sites. The thread titles make sense but the content is obviously randomly generated. I say just delete these.

Here's the thread: http://forums.mossat.org/showthread.php?tid=70

[deljr15]

Wow spamming in the stop spamming thread...

[MBobrik]

... saw it in the registration info too. This thing is more brazen with each day... perhaps the smaller posts containing only one-two links and the random introductions were just testing our defenses... I am afraid, now comes the true deluge.