10 replies to this topic

[Bill Cotter]

The last few days there has been an increased amount of spam posted on the board. We try to remove that junk as quickly as we can, so hopefully most of you won't have seen a lot of it. I went through the new user accounts last night and found a lot of known spammers had created accounts in the last week or so. A few had been used to post spam but about another dozen were sitting there ready to be used. I've banned all of those accounts and the related IP addresses so hopefully that will help. A few IPs had been used for multiple accounts.

Almost every one of these accounts were Gmail. It has certainly become the mail provider of choice for spammers...

If you spot any strange messages don't click on any of the links. That seems like common sense but amazingly people still do it. You can report the post and a moderator will check it out as soon as possible.

Bill

[Bill Cotter]

A spammer just left a reply in this topic - of yet more spam. Cute. Well, it's gone and so is he. I sure wish gmail did something to stop this sort of abuse.

[Randy Treadway]

Marc used to have some tool that could trace to root IP addresses, and block that entire IP region. Maybe he can help.

Also, if we set up something where anybody with a gmail address has to pass some kind of test to get posting privileges, what might that test entail? The CAPTCHA test isn't blocking them this time so I take it they're humans doing it (getting the logon IDs) and not spamming robots.

[Bill Cotter]

I have been blocking IPs as they get used, but not entire ranges. Not sure how that works.

I hear spammers are hiring people in third world countries and paying them peanuts to create all these accounts. What I have see is that some of these IDs get created with one IP and then the actual spam comes from another. If there's a way to block the creator IPs before they actually create the account that would seem to be the best defense.

We have been getting a dozen or more of these accounts created in a single day. The ads that do get through are so bad I can't imagine anyone ever buying their crap, but they never give up.

[Randy Treadway]

Bill Cotter, on 09 December 2011 - 09:41 AM, said:

I hear spammers are hiring people in third world countries and paying them peanuts to create all these accounts.

The rate I hear is 50 to 80 cents for every thousand accounts successfully set up.

[Bill Cotter]

That is really sad on so many levels.

The current sign up process asks the user to do a simple math problem to prove it's a person and not a bot. We could change the question, but to what? Any suggestions on a general type of answer a world's fair fan might know but not worth the effort for a spammer to research?

[Marc Williams]

It turns out we don't qualify for spam monitoring. When we bought IP.Board we paid for a "lifetime" license. That wasn't a sustainable business model for Invision and they changed their licensing in 2006. We were grandfathered in and until recently there was little benefit in switching to the standard license. Spam monitoring is now one of the benefits so I am upgrading our license. That should help.

[Bill Cotter]

Great news, and thanks for all of this wonderful board, Marc!

[Marc Williams]

Here's the info for our admins and anyone interested.

http://community.inv...ment-tools-r563

It's kinda slick how it works. It should reduce annoyances.

[Marc Williams]

Just added Akismet to the community as an extra layer of spam prevention.

[Bill Cotter]

Thanks to everyone who reported some spam earlier today. The topic and user are gone. Please keep up the good work in helping us clean this junk out on a timely basis.