lowrider Posted March 5, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2014 (edited) Don't know much about keeping unwanted bots away but if they still have a presence within your system how can they be kept out without a thorough purge. They are still present in the NY ride thread. Just appeared in the On ride thread. Edited March 5, 2014 by lowrider Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corey Posted March 5, 2014 Report Share Posted March 5, 2014 Any user names that have posted have got a permanent ban, so they can't post again. This bot primarily made one post per new username, likely because VBB has an option to delete all posts any one user made with just a few clicks. It's much harder to clean up spam if it's all unique users. Dirty business, but clever on the spam programmers' part. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gendzwill Posted March 5, 2014 Report Share Posted March 5, 2014 What sort of challenge questions are they? If they are the sort where you can parse the answer from the question or require pretty common knowledge then the bots can get past it pretty easy. They need to be things that require actual knowledge or a slight bit of research. Example: "What is Bomber's primary product line?", answer being "bindings". Something like that. I tried stuff like "Enter the first letter of each word in this question" and got nailed on the site I moderate. Now with a few well-chosen questions we are getting a spammer every other day, I think those might actually be real people paid to do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tugboater Posted March 5, 2014 Report Share Posted March 5, 2014 You can get them by going to the members list and sorting by registration date. Sort it newest to oldest and then start cleaning out all the funky new names. It's a little tedious but that's a method I use a lot when we get spam attacks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gendzwill Posted March 5, 2014 Report Share Posted March 5, 2014 vBulletin really needs a mass delete and post purge feature for this crap. Deleting accounts one by one is a PITA. What I'm getting now on my forums is not posts, rather these guys set up an account and post a visitor's note to themselves so it turns up on searches. Bastards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowrider Posted March 6, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 6, 2014 The order of the posting numbers are reversed in muthahuckers post on insoles. My response is numbered before his post ??? I can only read my dogs mind the gift doesn't extend to humans. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowrider Posted April 9, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 9, 2014 Are they back ? Check out 162 metal top Kessler thread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fin Posted April 9, 2014 Report Share Posted April 9, 2014 Sorry guys, the forum database is still messed up. Last time we tried to fix it we almost lost the entire thing. We have some other ideas but nothing solid right now. Have to stick with it for now until we find a solution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tufty Posted April 9, 2014 Report Share Posted April 9, 2014 About the only way to stop this is new account approval by moderator, with a requirement to explain why they want to be members, preferably followed by approval of the first N posts by each new account. The downside, of course, is that the mods have to deal with 40 or 50 fake applications per day, plus (potentially) a bunch of post approval. The upside is that account approval / bitchslap doesn't have to be done straight away, and there isn't the issue of removing accounts and posts. It's a pain in the ass, but automated solutions simply do not work. Oh, and I still get errors posting from Chrome on my Mac. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Posted April 9, 2014 Report Share Posted April 9, 2014 I assume the spam issue is different from the database weirdness issue, yes? Having said that, maybe the spam issue could be crowdsourced to a larger group of BOL members? I'm not sure exactly what functionality vBulletin offers, but maybe the first post for a new member could be shared with a somewhat larger group of members (i.e., say approx. 10 members in good standing), any one of whom can approve the post and member registration. If that's possible, it might help lighten the load on the moderators... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowrider Posted April 29, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2014 (edited) They are back ! Attn; Belstaff Jacket thread. Edited April 29, 2014 by lowrider Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowrider Posted April 30, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 30, 2014 Back today in the Off Topic thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gcarve Posted April 30, 2014 Report Share Posted April 30, 2014 Wow, just about every other thread has been spammed today!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.oldsnowboards.com Posted April 30, 2014 Report Share Posted April 30, 2014 Yes, back with a flurry of spam today. Normally I will delete "Hard" , last couple days I have been doing a soft delete in part so members can see all the posts we normally delete quietly in the back ground of administering a web forum. Please continue to use the "report a post", the little triangle icon with an exclamation mark in the center of it. It sends an alert to all mods, that way who ever is handy can address the issue. Posting on this thread if fine, it just may take a bit longer to get the news. Bryan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowrider Posted May 7, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2014 Where do I find that little triangle thingee with the exclamation mark ? There Back ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corey Posted May 7, 2014 Report Share Posted May 7, 2014 Fin has changed the registration so that every new member must be approved by him, I assume with some kind of a Turing test. That should filter out most of the spammers, but there will be a few more hits as they typically register a few days in advance of their few posts. On the negative side, this means he has to deal with a lot more crap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slopestar Posted May 7, 2014 Report Share Posted May 7, 2014 Looks Like we all need to buy more stuff from the bomber store! going after some Fin-Tec's later this week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.oldsnowboards.com Posted May 7, 2014 Report Share Posted May 7, 2014 Where do I find that little triangle thingee with the exclamation mark ? There Back ! It is on the gray bar just below the post . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gcarve Posted May 7, 2014 Report Share Posted May 7, 2014 Fin has changed the registration so that every new member must be approved by him, I assume with some kind of a Turing test. That should filter out most of the spammers, but there will be a few more hits as they typically register a few days in advance of their few posts. On the negative side, this means he has to deal with a lot more crap. Thanks Fin! It sounds like a hell of a lot more work to keep out these useless spammers. Ugghhhhhh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowmatic Posted May 9, 2014 Report Share Posted May 9, 2014 Turing test? from how many users? there are activ just now on forum following users: kbmf8247, keuw7918, kjnb6879, kpww7971, kwhz5003, lktr3302, lymj1529, mksu8734, mtbd4392, mtmk1414, myne5985, nsrl8406, ntse5905, odfs8312, okef8815, some minutes later: pezf2587, pfsh5343, pqeg3625, pweo2803, pwxj0896, qhap1190, qsyr2585, qufc2394, qysv0242, rfzv9423, the newest one is: nA5bD0dB4w they all can not be found on member list! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tugboater Posted May 10, 2014 Report Share Posted May 10, 2014 If they're not on the member list they are most likely banned already. On Vbulletin they can be banned but still on line until they log out or time out their connection, they still won't be able to post though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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