G*d damn spammers!

[MadMike]

I went to the main page and mods are bolded on the whose online. If I remember correctly that's what vb does automatically.

Actually, I did that. By default, all the user names looked the same. I remembered we had it that way before, so I looked it up. Then, just for fun I also found out how to make the banned users show up with the strikethru. That one took a bit more work, but I pulled it off.

[Mr Slugger]

Can they still determine who's a mod if they can't access the user list? I took access to that away from that particular user group.

Yup you have to remember that if someone has designed a program to look for things on a website it doesn't look at things like me and you look at it. I think the only way to kill it would be to remove the whose online to guest and that user group. But even then there's no guarantee. Like I said a program can look at multiple pages of information, and if you consider what it might be able to look at you can see how easy it would be to tell if a mod is on.

For instance I went onto cs not logged in. I went to the main page and mods are bolded on the whose online. If I remember correctly that's what vb does automatically. So if the script looking is designed to look in the html code for bold in that area then it knows you're a mod. If that wasn't there it could look on the show groups page. It would look in the first column for "is online now" if it finds it then it moves on if it doesn't then it spams. If it wasn't there it could url the member profiles and look for "is online now" and the word admin or moderator. Just a couple of ways.

Now saying that you should change the entire site, because honestly it's not worth it, but they can do pretty much anything.

I did decide to read up on some on spamming of vb. There are scripts out there. I found mainly pretty simple ones, but I also found alot that said that the new spam bots can get through the captcha thing

[MadMike]

Yeah say admin is group 1, super mods are group 2, and mods are group 3 by default in the forum software there's programs that can read that information. But say you create group 5 and the supermods were there instead of in group 2 then these programs would never find the mod.

Can they still determine who's a mod if they can't access the user list? I took access to that away from that particular user group.

[Rapscallion]

Yeah say admin is group 1, super mods are group 2, and mods are group 3 by default in the forum software there's programs that can read that information. But say you create group 5 and the supermods were there instead of in group 2 then these programs would never find the mod.

I'm more making them think there's a mod online all the time to scare them off

Rapscallion

[Lace Neil Singer]

I prefer the term whatsit. :P

[Arcade Man D]

Sometimes it isn't bots; it's actual people. That's how they get past the whatsit where you have to type a series of numbers and letters to prove that you're a person.

That's called a captcha, for your future reference.

[Mr Slugger]

Didn't know that about being able to detect a mod group. Interesting. May look to see if there's something that can fake that - keeping a mod group account perma logged in.

Yeah say admin is group 1, super mods are group 2, and mods are group 3 by default in the forum software there's programs that can read that information. But say you create group 5 and the supermods were there instead of in group 2 then these programs would never find the mod.

[Rapscallion]

Oh you'd be surprised at what the bots can do. When I ran CS there was a bot that I was testing (and mind you this was years ago) with minimal input could act like a poster. In fact I think other than a couple of mods no one knew it was a bot. Granted it was on the server side, but this forum software is one of the major and there are bots that can tell when mods are by either collecting data or because the mods are in a default mod user group so the bot looks if it finds that a mod group is online it moves to the next board.

Didn't know that about being able to detect a mod group. Interesting. May look to see if there's something that can fake that - keeping a mod group account perma logged in.

There's a program that can log in member accounts (including verifying the captcha stuff) and it's been used to promote itself on CS, though it's never been seen advertising. There're also Chinese sweatshops dedicated to spamming boards - just a copy/paste for someone in a cube somewhere to spam, and that's human verification right there.

The current Trollguard system (Ree's idea, MadMike's implementation) isn't perfect in that it puts off some new people, but it's one hundred percent effective in stopping spammers, trolls, the charmless neo-nazis we had a few christmasses ago, and so forth. We've had them all. I have no intention of dropping the system.

Rapscallion

[MadMike]

Ironically, my thread in Site News about spam prevention was spammed not once, but twice.

[Bloodsoul]

I remember the second Gamers.com message board (after the Lithium boards were dropped) being plauged with spammers for a good, long while.. especially porn spammers <___< Although mostly it was just oddly/repeatedly named members signing up but never posting (though I recall once that anyone who signed up to Gamers.com itself automatically signed up for the forums, so perhaps there were some real members there who simply never bothered with the forums).

I miss the second-gen board and the Lithium boards prior to it; once Gamers.com was bought by another company I simply stopped bothering with it; the second-gen board was just such a closenit community. Well, there's still Xbox LIVE in the case of two of the members.

[Mr Slugger]

Sometimes it isn't bots; it's actual people. That's how they get past the whatsit where you have to type a series of numbers and letters to prove that you're a person. One message board, we had a trio of spammers who were obviously people, as they only ever posted when there were no staff present. One would post an innocuous topic, such as "What did you have for dinner?" then another would post, and the third would follow with the spam link. -.-

Oh you'd be surprised at what the bots can do. When I ran CS there was a bot that I was testing (and mind you this was years ago) with minimal input could act like a poster. In fact I think other than a couple of mods no one knew it was a bot. Granted it was on the server side, but this forum software is one of the major and there are bots that can tell when mods are by either collecting data or because the mods are in a default mod user group so the bot looks if it finds that a mod group is online it moves to the next board.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

That just seems like so much trouble to go through, considering so few people actually will see the post, if any.

It really baffles me that it's worth it to them.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Sometimes it isn't bots; it's actual people. That's how they get past the whatsit where you have to type a series of numbers and letters to prove that you're a person. One message board, we had a trio of spammers who were obviously people, as they only ever posted when there were no staff present. One would post an innocuous topic, such as "What did you have for dinner?" then another would post, and the third would follow with the spam link. -.-

[Boozy]

Just out of curiosity, how do you catch a spammer while they're registering?

We can see who's registering at any given moment, and we have access to their IPs and e-mail addresses. If they look fishy (which they might for a variety of reasons) then we can run those IP/e-mail addresses through a database of known spammers. If we get a "hit", we apply a ban.

[jackfaire]

Just out of curiosity, how do you catch a spammer while they're registering?

My guess would be blatantly false information?