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overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 5:04 am
by tramp
What is about moderation in this forum?
Is no-one on the track to delete all those spam-bot-messages any more? :?

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 2:31 am
by glowrak guy
It's the weekend. :lol: Careful, or there will be volunteer recruitment campaigns.
Moderate for for a month, or get banned :twisted:
:wink:

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2015 2:20 pm
by RockHopper
Tramp is right, the forum is slowly getting swamped with spam messages. More moderators would help, but really there needs to be some sort of random element to registration e.g. random distorted letters.

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2015 2:48 pm
by raboof
RockHopper wrote:More moderators would help
Unfortunately, more moderators would not help: moderators only delete posts, not users, and we really want to delete the spambot users, not just their posts.

Luckily, you are in fact all moderators! When you hit the 'report post' triangle on a spam post, it's added to a moderation queue and will be removed after review.
RockHopper wrote:but really there needs to be some sort of random element to registration e.g. random distorted letters.
Unfortunately, this appears to be a 'solved problem' for spammers: we had that for a while and it did not help. That's when we added the "name a linux distro" question, which has worked surprisingly well for a while. Now this effect is wearing off, perhaps all we need is a new question. Any suggestions?

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2015 3:44 pm
by werock
On my forum I run, I have a random Q&A during registration (i.e. what is the colour of the banner at the top of the page, or some such thing), and also set the moderation so the first post from a new user needs to be approved. It means a user might have to wait a while before their post is visible but it keeps the board spammer free.

You then get spammers posting who make their first post resurrecting old threads with a 'thanks for the info' kind of post, but as their post needs to be approved they are easy to spot. Plus the IP addresses normally originate from Russia/Bangladesh/China/India.

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2015 4:57 pm
by ssj71
raboof wrote: Any suggestions?
Name an LV2 Host.
Name a common music genre.
Name a common musical instrument.
Name an ubuntu release codename.
What is the linux command to do [action]?
How many quarter notes in 4/4 time?
How many strings on a standard guitar?
What kind of instrument is a drum?
What's the acronym for Musical Instrument Data Interface?

I'm not sure whats required for a good question, but theres' a few options.

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2015 2:54 pm
by tramp
raboof wrote:Unfortunately, more moderators would not help: moderators only delete posts, not users, and we really want to delete the spambot users, not just their posts.
moderator or administrator, that are just names, it's just a click on the right button to allow "moderators" to delete users.

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2015 3:24 pm
by RockHopper
ssj71 wrote: Name an LV2 Host.
Name a common music genre.
Name a common musical instrument.
Name an ubuntu release codename.
What is the linux command to do [action]?
How many quarter notes in 4/4 time?
How many strings on a standard guitar?
What kind of instrument is a drum?
What's the acronym for Musical Instrument Data Interface?
They all look good to me. If it's possible to display a question from this list at random then that should hopefully keep the bots at bay for a while!

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2015 1:37 pm
by khz
I delete user && delete posts
But i am not 24/7 @LM ;-)
Delete user

Delete user:
Please note that deleting a user is final, they cannot be recovered. Unread private messages sent by this user will be deleted and will not be available to their recipients.

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2015 2:06 pm
by asbak
raboof wrote:Any suggestions?
Don't allow newly registered members to post immediately, set it so they have to be manually approved by Admin first.
Yes... I realise this will lead to overhead and extra work.

It's usually not difficult to spot spammers.

They often have accounts set to Asian & Oriental timezones,
Another giveaway is if they have some kind of website advertised in their personal profile.
Another giveaway are somewhat bizarre sounding usernames which are probably generated through some kind of script... (one can often detect a kind of username pattern).

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2015 11:25 am
by khz
~World War III takes place on the Internet :?:
:freedom:

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 11:50 am
by Felix
Hey, quick feedback from someone who just signed up and is kind of a Linux newbie as well:

I had troubles answering the question (I unsuccessfully attempted: avlinux, ubuntu studio, ubuntustudio, kubuntu, trusty tahr) and finally had to google "ubuntu release names" and use a proxy (because I had been blocked due to my numerous attempts) to successfully sign up.

Maybe I am a special kind of naive but you might want to consider specifying that question a bit more to avoid losing idiots like me at registration ;)

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 2:04 pm
by ssj71
how many strings on an average guitar?

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 2:48 am
by thetotalchaos
How about the name of the Qt front-end for the JACK low-latency audio server? I think that any linux-musician knows that. Or it can be something from JACK settings, like the default frames/period...

Re: overflowed by spam bots

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 6:38 am
by khz
Something like this (question: How about the name of the Qt front-end for the JACK low-latency audio server?) and activate PRO: CAPTCHA-Modul <-> Contra: CAPTCHA-Modul?