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Spamming the forums

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This topic contains 33 replies, has 12 voices, and was last updated by warzan 5 years, 2 months ago.

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August 18, 2019 at 9:08 pm #1427674

blinky465
17027xp

1

It’s happened a few times in recent weeks, but when I clicked on the Forums link on the site this evening, every single forum summary was the same drivel about bisexual fantasy or something (honestly, I genuinely didn’t bother reading it, honest guv).

Firstly, I’m presuming that the user responsible has been banned (or, if an account has been hacked, it’s at least been blocked until its been resolved). But is there some way that content of dubious value could be automatically screened?

I didn’t say anything the first few times, as spamming forums is a problem as old as the internet itself. But both my email inbox and the forum summary page on the OTT website is flooded with crap I really would rather not have to see. Is there anything you guys could do?

August 18, 2019 at 9:16 pm #1427683

unclejimmy
Member

9225xp

0

I checked mine and it is fine.

August 18, 2019 at 9:20 pm #1427685

blinky465
17027xp

0

Wow! That was fast. Nice one guys!

Maybe I need to look at my new topic email alert settings….

August 19, 2019 at 7:25 am #1427720

jodain
12433xp

0

You’re not the only one @blinky465 I had three emails in my inbox.

August 19, 2019 at 4:50 pm #1427933

zeker1966
1633xp

0

Same. It’s happened before as you mention. I note that by the time I go to the site it is often taken care of as those posts have been deleted. I’m sure everyone is doing the best they can. On the one hand I don’t want to see these things sent to my email on the other I know that by the time I go to the website they are generally cleaned up. Not sure what filtering can be done other than maybe putting a pause on new accounts posting new threads. In other words the new threads by a new account (or first time posting) must be looked at first.

August 19, 2019 at 4:55 pm #1427934

warzan
Keymaster

30960xp

7

Yeah its a tricky one, we have some measures already in place (like delayed activation of accounts to post etc) and we try to jump on them as soon as they happen.

But small team syndrome, we have to balance what time we have available to develop other solutions (that end up being circumvented)

But we are doing our very best 🙂

August 19, 2019 at 8:32 pm #1427965

jodain
12433xp

0

@warzan I completely understand having run my own websites it is difficult to keep on top of. The idea of new posts by newly registered accounts needing approval is a good one, but I can see it taking up time from the team.

I think i just need to turn off the email updates as I only spot the spam threads there. They seem to happen overnight UK time, and by the time I log on you’ve cleaned them up.

Keep up the great work!

August 19, 2019 at 8:44 pm #1427967

blinky465
17027xp

0

@warzan – you certainly got rid of them quickly enough! Nice work.

If it wasn’t for the notification emails, only those of us actually viewing the site at the time would have even been aware (it’s partly why I didn’t bother reporting it the last few times it happened, as it was dealt with so quickly).

Maybe there’s some kind of “filter list” and if certain words appear more than an acceptable number of times, it could go into a “moderation queue”? Yes it’s a little bit more admin – but probably not much more than responding to the original complaints and deleting the content? Not sure how sophisticated your CMS system is, but something that could identify *possible* objectionable content and throw it in to a “are you sure?” list might be an answer?

August 20, 2019 at 5:36 pm #1428200

warzan
Keymaster

30960xp

3

Just to keep you in the loop folks

We have been under a sustained spam ‘attack’ (makes it sound more dramatic than it is) today.

We have been seen hundreds of accounts created (and thousands of attempts)

We have been deleting the spam accounts every couple of hours (its a bit wackamole) and have updated the captcha stuff this evening to see if it can help.

We’ll be keeping an eye on it 🙂

August 21, 2019 at 5:43 am #1428348

sundancer
42903xp

3

Seeing that there is still a flood of registred users may I suggest you use a honeypot on the registration page like the WordPress Plugin “Antispam Bee” uses? Basically it adds a required field that is not visible to real users but shows up on a botcrawl. so if it’s clicked the spam is immediately recognized.

Also I use a plug-in for my forums to catch spammers. There is a WP plug-in for that as well

http://www.stopforumspam.com/contributions#link_wp

HTH

August 21, 2019 at 7:38 am #1428374

maledrakh
Participant

11996xp

0

I have had to turn off email subscriptions to the forums because of this.

a pity.

August 21, 2019 at 8:02 am #1428375

warzan
Keymaster

30960xp

0

We have added the stop forum spam option to see if it can filter these bots out.

We will also be gradually notching up our cloudflare security, we are always reluctant to do that as it does challenge a lot of ‘normal’ users of the site, but the more its used the better it gets at adding an additional protective layer of security so it may well be a case of bite the bullet on this.

August 21, 2019 at 8:56 am #1428387

warzan
Keymaster

30960xp

2

At first glance, the steps seem to be working

August 21, 2019 at 9:19 am #1428396

sundancer
42903xp

2

I was useful today! I contributed! I am worthy! 😉

August 21, 2019 at 10:15 am #1428413

warzan
Keymaster

30960xp

1

You absolutely were @sundancer

That plugin is churning away sending me email alerts that spammers are being DENIED!!!!! (love it and thank you mate)
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