Regarding Spambots

Anything not related to Egoboo.

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Shade
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by Shade »

Okay, seriously now? This is getting all sorts of ridiculous. We're getting more spam posts than real posts.
Spoiler: Just look at it!
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

Banning spree! Whee!

...that is a lot of posts deleted, Cimeries :o

Edit: 31 spambots banned. That's just too many
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by Cimeries »

Good thing I have the moderator control panel so I can get all the 0-reply spam topics in one hit.

Edit: Earlier today, the members list had 11 pages - it now has 13. This is messed up.
Btw, PF5, do you actually delete the spam accounts or do you just ban them? I can't really tell by their names since they all look like gibberish at first glance.
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

I have only banned them. I should go and delete all the banned accounts eventually.

At least I've defeated the spambots... for now.

Edit: ... silly spambots:
Spoiler: Who's spambotting?
Image
Deleted all 63 banned spambots, who wants to list all the non posting spambots?
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by Cimeries »

They're trying to post as guests?
Go home spambot you are drunk.
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by Maxaxle »

http://egoboo.sourceforge.net/phpBB3/vi ... f=6&t=1525
I can't read it, but it's obviously a spambot.
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by woodmouse »

brawsky wrote:I'm not entirely sure if it's a spambot or not.
...seriously? Spambots are apparently trying to get clever, but... instead, they, um, yeah.

But I think I know one possible reason why they're increasing: Lack of development. I know, it sounds like a sort of ridiculous reason, but I mean, think about it; if there'd be more posts that have "content" than just random stuff, it'd all be more concentrated on a few subjects, which would limit the spambots' guidance, at least assuming I understand the way they come correctly, and because of the links to various sites. More stuff is being linked recently than ever before (to news sites, anime/manga sites, etc.) and since a lot of sites are probably filled with all kinds of bots, like stuff that track the visitors, their browser's cookies, etc. and those tracking bot thingys come here (like the Google bot, but ones that show up as "guest") and drag all the possible crap with them.

Or maybe it's just the Google bot dragging them all in. I mean, that wasn't there before. And it can be banned, right? At least when there was that one forum (I'm sure Cimeries remembers it (or not, since the average person probably doesn't care about things that happened more than a year ago (not that you'd (or anyone else) be average in any way, Cime-epic-Ben (lol) (this is entirely platonic, of course (wait, is this sounding kinda like I'd be explaining saying "I love you", even though I didn't say it? (not that I wouldn't, I mean, I love all the cool people on this forum (and the less cool ones, well, there aren't many, but I love them too (lol, why the batman's underwear am I so lovely retarded today?! D:))))))), maybe Purple too (not that he'd be here to remember it (ugh, that sounded like he'd be dead (which I hope he isn't))))), there was an option in the settings somewhere to prevent the Google bot and other crawly-bot-thingies from coming.
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

Even if I remove the Googlebot (again) from the list of bots/spiders, it'll still be a guest.

Good news is that no spambot has registered in three days.
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by Maxaxle »

penguinflyer5234 wrote:Even if I remove the Googlebot (again) from the list of bots/spiders, it'll still be a guest.

Good news is that no spambot has registered in three days.
New record, oorrrr...?

Also: What if we added a new security measure? Maybe a basic game of tetris, at which you must score at least [insert pathetic score here] points?
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

We have no way of checking that. The scoring is done client-side. A spambot can (eventually) figure what it needs to send to circumvent that.
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by woodmouse »

How about having some complex geometric shape picture and the question "What is this called? Copy the image's url to a search engine if you don't know" or something like that. I'm pretty sure spambots couldn't do that, or at least most of them.
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

Spambots actually do know how to use a search engine. :|
And besides, they could probably get the data needed from the image url anyway.
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by woodmouse »

penguinflyer5234 wrote:Spambots actually do know how to use a search engine. :|
And besides, they could probably get the data needed from the image url anyway.
Hmmm... well, I meant like, the url would be random numbers or something, but like, searching by the picture, you know, like how Google for example suggests a search term when searching the url of an image, which in that case would (probably) be the geometric shape.
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by Shade »

Dude, most modern spambots completely bypass even Captcha, which usually is basically an image that contains a heavily distorted code of random symbols. I'm sure they won't have trouble recognizing geometric shapes.
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Re: Regarding Spambots

Post by woodmouse »

Image

...but yeah, I could be wrong, and probably am. But like, it could be in some really faint, messy colors or something if that'd make it more difficult, although I'm not sure if that'd make it a bit frustrating for actual people to register, even if it would make it more difficult for spambots.
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