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i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 4:12 am
by chaocrator
just FYI. 2018-03-26
bots.jpg
bots.jpg (143.46 KiB) Viewed 11216 times

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:33 am
by Michael Willis
Ha, I was just about to post the same thing, I already took the screenshot and then saw your message. Those look mighty suspicious.

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:41 pm
by Markus
It is spam, but more the clandestine one.

memberlist.php?first_char=g&start=50

There you can see a couple of user accounts, created in a narrow time frame, all with four digits at the end of the user name, demonstrating what it is all about: presenting a domain to be pushed in search engines. No human being cares about these accounts but bots still crawl the URL. They will never add a posting anywhere, their exclusive job is the link to the homepage on the users profile.

EDIT: Probably there's a setting which restricts adding a homepage URL to a profile without having a single post? Doesn't prevent from useless user accounts in the database but destroys their "business model" at least.

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 9:12 am
by linux-lover
@42low deleting after a year or more is a bad idea,why simple i rarely login, but read everyday :)

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 3:11 pm
by ssj71
just send a message to them "your account will be deleted if you don't login within 30 days"

I just got one of those from dropbox. :)

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2018 8:11 am
by linux-lover
@42low Agree ,but i have not much to say,and mostly it is being grumpy :) And most my work is making parodies on songs.
@ssj71 Yes that would work.

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2018 10:55 am
by raboof
42low wrote:This wil make the sql database smaller, so faster
I really doubt this will make much of a difference.
42low wrote:Many forums can delete by options. I know for sure that phpbb has these kind of options in the admin. :wink:

If so you could choose for options like "0 posts" combined with "more than a year (or longer) not logged in" and "logged in less than 2 times" or so.
These kind of combined options mostly cleans up a lot off useless rubbish without effecting real members. Extended personal experience.
Unfortunately when the query returns too many results, the feature does nothing :(

Deleted about 2000 inactive accounts, calling it a day, this is no way to spend a Sunday.

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2018 11:46 am
by khz
I have been here in the forum since 2008, but was not active from ~2013 - 2018 here in the forum due to personal circumstances (profession/life/...).
I would have found it a pity if I had been deleted.

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 8:11 am
by raboof
khz wrote:I have been here in the forum since 2008, but was not active from ~2013 - 2018 here in the forum due to personal circumstances (profession/life/...).
I would have found it a pity if I had been deleted.
I haven't and don't plan to delete accounts that have at least 1 post in all of history.

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 8:13 am
by raboof
42low wrote:
raboof wrote:
42low wrote:Many forums can delete by options. I know for sure that phpbb has these kind of options in the admin. :wink:
Unfortunately when the query returns too many results, the feature does nothing :(

Deleted about 2000 inactive accounts, calling it a day, this is no way to spend a Sunday.
You could choose to do it in parts. With 0 posts older than 2 or 3 years first, and then with 0 posts in 1 year? Depending on what you want to delete.
Yeah, that's what I did. Still a pain ;).

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 11:11 am
by khz
raboof wrote:I haven't and don't plan to delete accounts that have at least 1 post in all of history.
Yes, that's how I read and understood it.
I wanted to say that there are sometimes personal circumstances, which is why you are not present in a forum for a longer time.

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 12:49 pm
by raboof
khz wrote:
raboof wrote:I haven't and don't plan to delete accounts that have at least 1 post in all of history.
Yes, that's how I read and understood it.
I wanted to say that there are sometimes personal circumstances, which is why you are not present in a forum for a longer time.
OK, since you were active before you were in no danger of your account being deleted ;)

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2018 5:53 pm
by cornicis
Why doesn't the board use a good captcha to deny registration to bots?

Re: i guess most of them are bots

Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2018 7:16 am
by raboof
cornicis wrote:Why doesn't the board use a good captcha to deny registration to bots?
In short: because it's not trivial to do, opinions vary on what would be a 'good' captcha implementation, advances in AI techniques for solving captcha's make them less effective, and there are spammers using real humans to get past captcha's (either by tricking them or by paying them).