Spambots Getting Bad

[NedRyerson]

Guessing there's a hole somewhere in the software that's letting these bots in. Are there more admins besides Aaron here or Aaron, are you flying solo? Can any of us help out at least temporarily to try to stem the tide?

 

[Rick]

Me I just hit the ignore button.

 

[Lbpesq]

Them spambots need to eat some CBD and relax!

hehehehe

Bill, tgo

 

[mayfly]

man the spam bots are out of control!

 

[supertruper1988]

I think replying to their threads encourages them so maybe just report and ignore?

 

[bonesofwrath]

The thing about links is if you saw the pic or video, you already "responded'

I think the biggest single simple thing that could be done is not allow links from new accounts

 

[aarontunes]

These things always seem to happen in waves, and of course we got a wave last week while I was on vaca. Should be cleaned up now.

 

[bonesofwrath]

Out here in the southeast we just call em cows, not vaca.

 

[bonesofwrath]

The post throttling I get, but it seems to apply to reporting spammers too.

Whats especially maddening is that the forum shows me "similar threads" with the most recent spam. So the forum software knows, yet...

 

[aarontunes]

Quite frankly I am at a loss. I purchased the Xenforo add on that is recommended for this, and I've configured the user group permissions to not allow users with less than 5 posts to post links in threads, but it does not work at all.

Still looking for other solutions, but not really sure where to go from here.

 

[Rick]

If it really is a spambot, and not someone nefarious, and not someone sitting in a boiler room in a third world country with nothing else to do, how about putting one of those captcha things, you know, click on the motorcycles in the picture, before being able to sign-up, and on the first five posts? Though in Warmoth's case they could use a pic of a turtle to prove you're a human.

 

[mayfly]

I did one of those for the contact form on the Mayfly website, and although I'm sure it does discourage some legitimate emails, it 100% keeps the spam down.

 

[bonesofwrath]

And oh yeah. What's with the spambots making spammy sounding usernames? When I see a new user called cbdgummysolarinfo I report them before they make their first post.

Also,I know we can't actually do this, and there have been one or two female members over the decade+ I've been around, but .. a new user with a female name is probably 98+% likely to be a spambot. Women that play guitar just don't seem to obsess over gear the way guys do.

 

[Rick]

What I don't understand is how stupid the bots are, I could care less about anything they post here. I'm talking about the real bots.

 

[mayfly]

Women that play guitar just don't seem to obsess over gear the way guys do.

Having been in bands for decades that were at least 50% women, I agree. They tend to focus more on the music. Their gear, as long as it's at a good level, tends to be secondary.

Not a bad thing IMHO - something we could all probably learn from....




.... nahhhhh

 

[NedRyerson]

If it really is a spambot, and not someone nefarious, and not someone sitting in a boiler room in a third world country with nothing else to do, how about putting one of those captcha things, you know, click on the motorcycles in the picture, before being able to sign-up, and on the first five posts? Though in Warmoth's case they could use a pic of a turtle to prove you're a human.

They're bots. Nobody is sitting around doing this manually. This isn't the '90s anymore.

But there actually is a CAPTCHA installed on the register-account screen. The bots are just getting sophisticated enough to defeat it (which explains why they're coming in waves). Unfortunately, the only foolproof way to fend off spambots is to manually approve every account registration. When I admined phpBB boards, I did that myself, but our interest group was so niche that we had maybe a new account sign up once every few weeks, so it wasn't a burden on my time.

I can't imagine Aaron would be too pleased to do that

 

[Rick]

Where there's a will there's a way.