Spammers

[GramercyRiff99]

I've been seeing a lot of complaints in the last few days regarding the number of spammers on the forum. Frankly, these complaints are more than warranted, and this isn't a thread to tell those people to shut up or anything. Rather, I thought I'd put this up just to let the rest of the active forum know what the deal is.

Basically, as far as I can tell, we're getting constantly hit with bot spammers, which is why so many of these spam posts are totally identical format-wise. There are only really two ways to deal with this: make it so new accounts need to be confirmed by a mod (which we tried before and it didn't work because us mods weren't active enough to constantly let people in and because it's hard to tell a spammer just by their name) or just take them out as they show up. Currently I'm engaged in the second part of that, and I've started banning IP addresses in an attempt at cutting down on the sheer numbers of the bastards, but it's like trying to take out a swarm of ants with a handgun. Fire all you want, you're not going to make a measurable difference.

Some part of me wants to do what another forum I'm on did and just rangeban all of Asia, but frankly I'm not sure if the administration would agree that's a good idea and to do so would be highly overstepping my boundaries as a mod. I will say though that 99 percent of our spam comes from Asia and I don't think I remember a single active member on this site who comes from there, so it may be an idea I revive and propose sometime if IP banning does nothing to slow the tide of new spam accounts.

Anyway, keep up the vigilance and keep reporting. I slacked on the mod duties for a long time but hopefully (with the cooperation of any other mods that may still be around, I honestly have no idea who that may be) we can at least reduce the amount of spam we're getting here.

[wargod]

I've been seeing a lot of complaints in the last few days regarding the number of spammers on the forum. Frankly, these complaints are more than warranted, and this isn't a thread to tell those people to shut up or anything. Rather, I thought I'd put this up just to let the rest of the active forum know what the deal is.

Basically, as far as I can tell, we're getting constantly hit with bot spammers, which is why so many of these spam posts are totally identical format-wise. There are only really two ways to deal with this: make it so new accounts need to be confirmed by a mod (which we tried before and it didn't work because us mods weren't active enough to constantly let people in and because it's hard to tell a spammer just by their name) or just take them out as they show up. Currently I'm engaged in the second part of that, and I've started banning IP addresses in an attempt at cutting down on the sheer numbers of the bastards, but it's like trying to take out a swarm of ants with a handgun. Fire all you want, you're not going to make a measurable difference.

Some part of me wants to do what another forum I'm on did and just rangeban all of Asia, but frankly I'm not sure if the administration would agree that's a good idea and to do so would be highly overstepping my boundaries as a mod. I will say though that 99 percent of our spam comes from Asia and I don't think I remember a single active member on this site who comes from there, so it may be an idea I revive and propose sometime if IP banning does nothing to slow the tide of new spam accounts.

Anyway, keep up the vigilance and keep reporting. I slacked on the mod duties for a long time but hopefully (with the cooperation of any other mods that may still be around, I honestly have no idea who that may be) we can at least reduce the amount of spam we're getting here.

BAN THERE ASSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Godfather]

Nice to know you guys are trying.

[GramercyRiff99]

Update: after over two months of banning IP ranges, things seem to have calmed down somewhat. We're still getting a few spam accounts per day, but they're very easy to spot and 2/3 of the time I can hit them before they even post anything. At the rate I'm going, the whole of East Asia (outside of Japan and South Korea) is going to be rangebanned eventually, but honestly I don't care anymore and I don't think anyone else does either.

There's one other thing I'd like to add, just to aid in future career decisions for anyone who wants to be a third world spammer. We almost never have any of them register on Sundays and Mondays, so you can probably assume you get those days off. I'd prefer Saturday and Sunday personally, but if you're looking for a five day a week career spammer doesn't look so bad all things considered!

[LIER ONE]

This is great!! I was just going to do a topic how there are just too many spammers here lately. Maybe they will eventually give up. I just don't understand why they attack here as our membership isn't high.

[4nik8]

Well, that was an all-too-brief respite!

Copied from another thread:

my suggestion: set the board option such that it's required for all new registrations to be activated prior to being allowed to post

[Lux]

It’s a good idea. Someone could pm War Chief and also suggest him to choose a couple of new mods, regular members, just to make the cleaning easier. These spammers are out of control.

[Godfather]

We're under attack!!! We need ACTIVE Mods.

[ILLER...]

they've over run us

[Lux]

53 new spammers or potential spammers (some of them haven't posted YET) since yesterday. FuemiadummA’s 1st post was on Jan 8th and he/she is posting again now, cdnhome posted 35 times and Updapyeldem 70 times! Mods PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!

[Ninth Delegate]

Agreed, the majority of the time, its easy to spot a spammer just by the registered username. It's possible to ban these users before they make a single post.
I've had to wade through over 200 spam posts today alone. More mods are definatly needed.

[4nik8]

Agreed, the majority of the time, its easy to spot a spammer just by the registered username. It's possible to ban these users before they make a single post.

That means you'd need to see them immediately as they create the account - requiring authorization prevents them from creating even a single spam post

[Ninth Delegate]

There's only Grammercyriff and Scurvydog thats regually active on here. The rest havn't been on since last year.
I've contacted warchief but I don't expect anything to come of that, same as the last few times I sent a PM.

I'm adding spammers to my foe list so hopefully it makes their posts invisible to me and I don't have to wade through so much crap.

[ILLER...]

they'll still show up on the new posts list

[Godfather]

I've PM'd all the mods but who knows if they will read it.