Spam Bots on the Forum

[Sithking Zero offline]

Sorry...

Ah, well. Great minds think alike, eh?

Or maybe your idea was so good, I decided to STEAL IT!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!! X)

[DELETED offline]

DELETED

[Sithking Zero offline]

The Php.BB boards as a whole are having this very problem, if my understanding of the situation is correct.

[Stephen (x1)]

I was wondering. Rather then kill spambots after they registered and spammed, why not install the numerous phpBB mods that stops bots from before registering?

I don't recall, but Erynn had a reason. And you don't have any such mod on TL, do you?

[Reesane offline]

http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile ... ile&u=2233

Let's welcom the first spambot after the purge!

[Mewberries151]

http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2233

Let's welcom the first spambot after the purge!

Hello Spambot!

*click* ...Goodbye Spambot.

[TB3]

(applauds)

Bravo Mew!

[DELETED offline]

DELETED

[TB3]

I busted a cap in the a** of another 'new member' earlier just so you guys know

(yawns)

Well, after tonight I need my beauty sleep, so night guys, pleasant dreams to you all and take care

[Sithking Zero offline]

Okay! Good night, TB3!

Hmm... you know, that's a really good idea! We should have one of those!

Why don't you e-mail your idea to one of the admins and see what they do with it?

[Rail Runner offline]

Definitely....that would be awesome. The question is simple enough for human users...but for bots..its the end of the line.

[Reesane offline]

http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile ... d4d4926e26
New one...

[TB3]

Just deleted him Reesane - thanks

Right everyone, please say hello to our newest member CialisSSS

(accidentally clicks 'delete')

Whoops - goodbye CialisSSS

I love capping these guys!

[Overcaffeinated Sloth offline]

Ya know, I can just see this elevating to the point where We have no new increase in members, all the Lyoko freaks are deleted. Even the non-bot ones, who jus post something in GD about their forum or some game they like. To me they're pretty much the same anyways.


*Thinks of a trigger Hppy TB3 and MewB And X1*

Yeah, that's way too easy.

Besides, you guys can't be on all the time. Why not look at at least some different options? Mabey We should listen to Warton?

BTW: I believe that installing the question thing at the time meant somethig like taking down the site and repairing it in safe mode and going through a bunch of lines of oding. But then again, that was a few months ago.

[Sithking Zero offline]

We may not be able to destroy all of them, and we may not be able to catch all of them, but we do what we can to protect our beautiful forum.

Anyway, seriously, we should give thought to extra measures like that "Human" question from earlier. The spambots that get through that will have to be pretty sneaky.

[Darkborn offline]

http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile ... ile&u=2239

[TB3]

You make a good point AB about the 'Are you human' option - however Stephen, Mew and I don't have access to make changes that drastic to LF - only Erynn has that priviledge - until she comes back we three are just doing our best to keep on top of the issue.

The way we do it is check out the memberlist checking for suspicious acounts, which we've seen a lot of the past few days - many seemingly normal accounts all share same or similar 'hobbies' and 'occupations', like 'web-design' and 'business', and many 'new member's' names are just gibberish - many also link back to pornographic sites (which often have seemingly innocent URLs), websites hawking phoney businesses (such as the one Darky-B pointed out, which links to a false recruitment site called 'The Only Profit'), or other innappropriate material.

When we find an account fulfilling enough of these criteria, we delete it - it doesn't mean we're trigger happy though - there's two accounts in the memberlist that list no details, and even though I'm convinced from their random-letter-combination names that they are spambots, it's better to give them the benefit of the doubt until they either post, or get removed in the next forum sweep.

We also come across many genuine new accounts that give us hope - members who make CL-references in their names, or list 'Code: Lyoko, Duh!' as their hobbies - it's always good to see real people signing up to LF, and I am of the hope that our online community continues to strengthen and grow

Hope that helps explain our methodology, and thanks for the tip Darky-B.

[Mewberries151]

We may not be able to destroy all of them, and we may not be able to catch all of them, but we do what we can to protect our beautiful forum.

Anyway, seriously, we should give thought to extra measures like that "Human" question from earlier. The spambots that get through that will have to be pretty sneaky.

Below are Erynn's reasons for not using the suggestions that have been previously made.

phpBB has a guide to passing bots, I'll look for all thr important and quick deteil.

1. Set activation to 'user' or 'admin'
This means to prevent fake email adresses.

2. Enable visual confirmation

3. Using mods.
These are home made mods blocking spam, .ect
Block Open Proxy Registrants by TerraFrost
Blocks those attempting to register from open proxies. xgmx can come back through this.

Disable spambots Registrants by TerraFrost
Blocks those attempting to register from open proxies. xgmx can come back through this.

The humanizer by Underhill
Adds the question 'Are you human?' to the registration form which must be answered for the registration to be processed. Since this isn't a standard phpBB question, most bots will not answer it.

One last thing for Erynn, I know you have alot of "no posters" no the user list, so this one, seems very helful.
Admin Toolkit - Allows you to mass delete users. Users should never be deleted straight from the users table.

Source: phpbb.com

The first two are fairly elementary (har har, I live in England now so I gotta pull some British crap here and there)... As for MODs, I never mess with them even if they've been approved (they're a pain, since if you want to keep them you have to do special installation things when the time comes to upgrade, and also I'm just not comfortable with the fact that they provide potential security issues. and then, of course, I dunno anything about PHP so, ehh.)

What's wrong with deletion via users table?

[Darkborn offline]

http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile ... ile&u=2247

http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile ... ile&u=2251

[TB3]

Both deleted DB, along with four others.

Six spambots since I last checked the lists, only two hours ago! (shudders)

[Darkborn offline]

http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile ... ile&u=2249

Sorry to pester you...

[TB3]

No worries DB - done

[DELETED offline]

DELETED

[Reesane offline]

http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile ... ile&u=2249

*Pushes solar-powered deathray out of the shade...*

Edit: http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile ... ile&u=2252

Deathray fully charged and waiting....

[Mewberries151]

So I see. Although the visual confirmations have been bypassed numerous times. But it seems Erynn's lazy in installing mods. *runs*

I definitely would not call it laziness, especially not with her current life schedule. ^^;

But if we have the correct people to install mods, its all good.

If you remember what TB3 said, only Erynn has the access to do that. What's more, I can kind of see her point on why she wouldn't want to install them. Read again what she says:

Not only is it a hassle to download and install the programming but there are risks to the forum being glitched up and bogged down with other sorts of things. Seems to me, that it'd be trading in one problem (that we know how to handle) in exchange for a whole other bunch of problems that could erupt from the installation...and that we <u>wouldn't</u> know how to fix.

And then where would we be?

If you ask me, it's tons easier to just delete the spambots as they come and hope phpBB (who is the main cause of all this) eventually gets their act together and fixes whatever glitch in their programming it is that's allowing spambots to join.

Sure it might be somewhat of a hassle deleting them as they join, but I'm sure I'm not the first to find it somewhat therapeutic at the end of a long (and/or bad) day.

http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2249

*Pushes solar-powered deathray out of the shade...*

Edit: http://www.lyokofreak.net/forum/profile ... ile&u=2252

Deathray fully charged and waiting....

Taken care of! *salutes*