Forum Spam

[mo2468]

Is there a way to get rid of these spam accounts? Like, to make it harder to create one? They're becoming a nuisance, since I browse the index to see if there are new posts anywhere, and half the time right now "new posts" are spam, when I click to open the forum I'm disappointed.

[ChibiKami]

Hi mo2468- we're doing our best to keep the forums spam free-they're tricky. Since we aren't available on the weekends-that does seem to be prime time for spamming of our boards. We'll try to stay on top of more of these spammers as best we can. We've been blocking IPs and tightening things on the back end, so we're definitely aware of how annoying they are. Thanks!

[ChibiKami]

Hey all-we're noticing that spam is sneaking into forum threads. If you notice anyone who seems to be a spammer-feel free to shoot us a private message, or post here. We try to keep a lookout for them, but we do miss them here and there. Let's try to keep the forums spam free!!!

Thanks!

[Jun Kayama]

(1) Out of 47791 users, only 1520 have any posts at all - the rest are sitting at zero. While there are a good number that just lurk (like I do) there are well over 3000+ names that are in (Name+5 digit) format which are obviously bots dating from 2006-7.

There are toolkits like this to police that up.

(2) Most of these spambots use sigline redirects. They may post some nonsense tangentially relevant to the thread at hand (i.e. "I hope there is a book released of swimsuit shots of Vampire Hunter D by Amano") but they always hawk merchandising of some sort in their siglines.

Regarding tightening up registration, there's this available.

vBulletin is another option but this is what your IT goons decided to run with. If you also decide to merge a number of subforums (is there really a need for more than one Introduction subforum?) and consolidate, it would improve things.

[hanged_man]

Jun has a lot of good points, even consolidation of topics should help. The less opportunity to for a program to identify places to bury spam in threads, the better. Outing spammers and bots here seems like a good idea just to have everything all in one place, but it doesn't seem to be a popular option. If phpBB allows for a "Report" option, either on specific posts or for users, that would probably be the easiest way to peer monitor the system without necessarily having to get technical.
The spam activity does seem to be picking up recently, other than the usual Google [Bot], Google Adsense [Bot] being the only two registered users browsing the forums. It's come to my attention with the most recent post in the Editor thread of the Guild's Group Search. Just some thoughts.

[HiroPon]

Thanks for the follow-up, hanged_man. Spam activity is becoming quite prevalent recently and we're currently trying to come up with a way to handle this situation. Anyways, all of your input is important to us so if any of you guys have an idea, let us know. BTW, I deletd all the spam topics I was able to find. Once again, I sincerely appreciate everyone's concern of making this forum a better social platform!

[PalenMisha]

Just my thoughts since I noticed a couple new spam posts today - an option for us to report spam posts somehow would be nice (and potentially save you guys time finding the posts in question) since the spammers have started 'replying' to older threads now and that makes it a bit less obvious what they're up to unless you pop in and look at the new post. Unfortunately, I know what a pain it can be to change how something is coded so I understand that this may not be a practical option. I also understand that people are lazy though and while they may find the spam posts annoying, they may also not be interested in noting down the name of the thread/offender to report it here. I admit, I didn't bother this time since you guys have been pretty good about cleaning them out so far (thank you).

[HiroPon]

@PalenMisha - Good point. An option for reporting spammers will be a nice addition. Well noted. Thanks!

[Jun Kayama]

Until ...

(1) The userbase is cleaned up from just shy of 48000 to the 1500 or so that it really should be;
(2) Sub-Forums are consolidated significantly;
(3) Whoever runs your IT department (and I know a bloke who could probably fix your phpBB issues in a few days in just his spare time if you don't have a dedicated webmaster for this) installs the appropriate phpBB 2.0 mods to tighten up registration and posting;

Spambots will degrade these Forums. The volume of spam lately is incredible, especially after a weekend. There are spam posts disguised as user posts reported a month or two ago still up. Why is there a need to do moguratataki all week long on these spambots when there are fixes available?

[PalenMisha]

Just an FYI for when someone gets around to cleaning up all the spam posts from '_Phalse' - there are 2 very random posts in addition to the really obvious ones. [Only figured out they were spam because they made no sense, but had a spam-ish looking link in the signature.] One is in the June threads about your most recent purchases and the other was in the DMG section about looking for a new group I think (I found them last night and didn't go back to check today - sorry).