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Milly Jones
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« Reply #15 on: 10:44:37, 02-10-2008 » |
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Is there some way that registrations can be "moderated" before the person can begin to post?
I'm hoping that the new settings I've selected as an experiment will allow this to happen, r.
Any idea why this is happening now? (I haven't seen any of the offending posts.)
Someone happened on our site, and decided it would be a good place to spam - one of the early links actually included a variation of the forum name, so it was deliberate and targetted. No doubt some spammers work in loose alliances, and pass round links amongst themselves: two yesterday were both from the Caribbean, and we later had a whole spate from Russia. Will somebody please tell me what the point of it all is? What's in it for them? Do they get any financial benefits or do some people just have no life......I just don't get it I'm afraid. |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Andy D
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« Reply #16 on: 10:55:28, 02-10-2008 » |
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Will somebody please tell me what the point of it all is? What's in it for them? Do they get any financial benefits or do some people just have no life......I just don't get it I'm afraid.
It's about money of course Milly, as is email spam. Porn is big business. Once your email address or forum name, in this case, is picked up, the spammers sell it on, so it will just get worse, unless you do something to block it. In the case of forums and blogs, in addition to trying to get people to respond to the spam, I would guess that it might also be about achieving high rankings in Google - the more sites that link to yours, the nearer the top you appear in Google. What better way to get links than to post them yourself? |
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Andy D
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« Reply #17 on: 16:31:24, 03-10-2008 » |
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Just to reinforce what I posted previously: Spammers have reportedly defeated revised CAPTCHAs from both Google and Microsoft.
Worse, miscreants intent on establishing online webmail accounts to bombard us all with useless stock tips and penis pills have also broken other forms of verification system designed to tell humans and computers apart, such as kitten-based approaches to image picking posers.
Spam-tools scumbags behind the XRumer utility boast their application can defeat improved CAPTCHA controls deployed by both Hotmail and Google in response to earlier cracks, according to reports in the blogosphere.
XRumer is used for applications including littering forums with spam in a bid to increase search engine rankings. The latest version is also able to break cat-based authenticationfrom http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/03/captcha_break/We don't even have CAPTCHAs here, so we need human intervention to block spammers. |
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Antheil
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« Reply #18 on: 16:38:36, 03-10-2008 » |
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Yesterday we had 38 new "Members" this month, now I see we have 81 !!  Could we have CAPTCHAs here? Could the facility to post your website be disabled? |
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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trained-pianist
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« Reply #19 on: 16:44:42, 03-10-2008 » |
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Is this the worse case scenario? It looks like it is.
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Morticia
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« Reply #20 on: 16:52:04, 03-10-2008 » |
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We've done some tweaking behind the scenes which means that spammers are now unable to access the main board to post anything. In effect, they go into a keep-net allowing us to ban them and hurl them into cyber Siberia. But yes, Andy's right, this needs human intervention. Ron can probably give a more informed explanation. Anyway, so far the strategy seems to be working....
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Martin
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« Reply #21 on: 16:55:51, 03-10-2008 » |
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All praise to the mods/admin team for their sterling efforts in dealing with this matter. Let's hope you manage to nail it. Thanks to you all.
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IgnorantRockFan
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« Reply #22 on: 17:28:12, 03-10-2008 » |
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Another board I frequent has reported the same problem. It sounds like it's a concerted, world-wide attack on forums. With our Mods like our own personal Maginot line  (Er... but a bit more successful  ) |
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Allegro, ma non tanto
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time_is_now
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« Reply #23 on: 17:31:39, 03-10-2008 » |
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It sounds like it's a concerted, world-wide attack on forums. Which Moderator does Will Smith play? |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #24 on: 18:08:01, 03-10-2008 » |
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We've done some tweaking behind the scenes which means that spammers are now unable to access the main board to post anything. In effect, they go into a keep-net allowing us to ban them and hurl them into cyber Siberia. But yes, Andy's right, this needs human intervention. Ron can probably give a more informed explanation. Anyway, so far the strategy seems to be working....
All I've done is to alter the registration process so that instead of newbies activating themselves as the second part of registration, they're now held in a separate area until we vet them and decide whether they're legit. or not. So far we seem to have it right: not only was Kuhlau's name recognisably more apt than the spammers', but his other visible details bore none of the hallmarks that most of the spammers share to a certain degree, and the nature of his subsequent posting confirms we had the right hunch there. Any more which seem borderline rather than definite will go into a separate system not unlike the old BBC pre-mod protocol. It just means rather more work for us.
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Kuhlau
Gender: 
Posts: 60
Kasper Meier
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« Reply #25 on: 18:14:13, 03-10-2008 » |
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I feel reassured knowing that such an intelligent approach to spam capture is being deployed in this forum. I wouldn't have fancied cyber Siberia - especially in winter.
FK
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Il Grande Inquisitor
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« Reply #26 on: 18:15:04, 03-10-2008 » |
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May I just add my gratitude to all the 'behind the scenes' work the moderators have done to not only fight off the spammers, but to ensure that 'business as normal' has continued here.  |
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Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency
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Antheil
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« Reply #27 on: 18:21:42, 03-10-2008 » |
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I too think the Moderation Team with their tweaking and vigilance have done a marvellous job and the vetting will ensure that genuine new members can join.
It is still a mystery as to why this MB was targeted.
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #28 on: 18:38:44, 03-10-2008 » |
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It sounds like it's a concerted, world-wide attack on forums. Which Moderator does Will Smith play?  |
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #29 on: 18:39:55, 03-10-2008 » |
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A spammer caught red handed  |
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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