Spam warnings!
 

Heya people! It's me, your boy, Ryuko Matoi <3

So, the site is experiencing a mass of spam lateley, and while we are working on it every day, I still found it important to warn you guys. So here goes:

Threads that have been posted by the spambots are easy to recognize. Most of them have weird titles of random leters, and the ones who have actual words are mostly very out of place. Otherwise, the threads are always filled with links.

LINK ONLY THREADS ARE NOT TO BE CLICKED. STAY AWAY FROM THOSE LINKS!

We don't know what the links do, but taking the fact that they keep trying to get us there, it's probably a virus or spyware, or malware in general.

You don't need to report the posts, we are busting them around the clock, just had to make sure you kids are safe and warned <3

Please pet me for this ^3^

All the love
-Ryuko Matoi

Post filter?
 

Hey Ryuko,

since DA is based on vBulletin, I am certain there is some kind of filter you can apply to new posts/comments before, like marking posts with more than 2 links or containing certain keywords as spam. Maybe you can also pinpoint the IP addresses of the spammers and block them completely.

(Just some quick idea, idk if any of this is applicable in this case.)

Oh really? o-O

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...9/orly_owl.jpg
:D

OR worse, it could be a phishing site - If users visit one of those sites, they could try to trick users into divulging their personal information (e.g. Credit card number, Social Security number, etc.) or it could be a ransomware site (e.g. A Fake FBI or Department of Justice site which locks up your browser and demands that you send a money order payment for a bogus fine).

At the very first spam attack, I had already mentioned that there is a vBulletin 3.x.x (The version of vBulletin that we are using is v.3.8.1) anti-spam solution listed on the official vBulletin forum (See post #2 in the following Spam thread) -> https://diaperedanime.com/forum/showt...518/index.html. Perhaps this can be brought to Akuma's (The on-call programmer for all of Ai's sites) attention and perhaps he could apply the solution. Simply deleting the user account made by the Spambot will not stop future Spam thread attacks from occurring since the same Spambot or other Spambots can create other user accounts with which to dump Spam threads. We need a more permanent solution.
:cool:

We believe that the attacks are coming from real people rather than an electronic attack, but if you can prove otherwise, please let us know.

~FlamingCreeper
Roleplay Section Moderator

thanks for the heads up!

l am playing with this ability as it happens, truth be told l dont have hell of allot of time here, but lm hoping some of the changes lve made have cut down or out whats been happening, all l have left is to choose an adequate level of how many posts are checked before a user is deemed not a potential spammer.

It was confirmed from someone that they do lead to virus infected websites. Very important to stay clear of links.

This is also happening on other sites like the dbzindiapers forums

I hear other sites based around our interests in some form is getting hit all over the place so I wouldn't be surprised if its a bigoted person(s) or a troll(s) as well in the last few months almost every site with content we are into seems to been getting targeted worse then normal ,seems Deviantart from what I can tell was groundzero in the recent months of our interests getting screwed over worse then normal and it spread from their just saying as I looked around and it seemed by all accounts it started their with it getting worse for us their in the last few months and then has spread to in general first the bigger known sites with our interests and has been going in general systematically to other lesser known sites . Hell heard some sites with our interests as a focus had to IP ban a group of these types doing whats going on here before this kind of spammy bullshit stopped with someone once and awhile still popping up on them spanning this bullshit link stuff

I used to post on there but

1. People are still on that forum?

2. Is DBZ Jared even alive lmao?

1. Eh kinda I pop in once in awhile

2. No fucking clue X3

With just an IP address to go by, I don't think that anyone can tell what or who is behind the Spam attacks. I don't really know whether these Spam attacks are coming from a Spambot or from an actual person (IMHO, if it is a person then they sure went through a lot of trouble to create all of those individual user accounts and launch all of those individual attacks). I thought that it was most likely an automated Spambot that was doing all of the dirty work.

With ChiNa's solution, we could have stopped the attacks if it was indeed a Spambot (The vBulletin settings that he detailed requiring a potential member to answer two questions [For verification] during registration would have prevented a Spambot from successfully registering as a member (99.9% of the time according to ChiNa) since the AI in a Spambot would most likely not know how to answer random questions which could be about anything [It would be very difficult if not near impossible to program the "Fuzzy logic" into the AI to correctly respond to a particular given random question that only a human could answer "On the fly" - It's sort of like a CAPTCHA system]). If it was an actual person who could answer the questions that was performing the attack, the installed anti-Spam add-on (Either vBStopForumSpam or Spam-O-Matic) would further scrutinize the new user's IP address against its regularly updated database of Spam IP addresses to determine whether it belongs to a known Spam site even if the person or somehow the Spambot (Highly unlikely) correctly answered the registration questions. Of course, if the IP address was "Clean" (Not a known Spam IP address) those measures would have been circumvented, a new user account created and the attacks could continue (Nothing is 100% secure) but at least then we would know that it was most likely a real person behind the Spam attacks (If they made it through the registration questions) and take other measures to deal with the person.

However, it appears that the point is now moot since the solution that Stoner created and applied (Filtering posts) is independent of that fact - His solution allows the registration of new user accounts (Possible Spammer) but is only concerned with the quantity of and content quality of threads, rather than with the source (Spambot or actual person and IP source) of the threads to identify a Spam attack. Of course, there could be vulnerabilities in his solution as well (Again, nothing is 100% secure). However, it currently appears to be an effective solution. We all owe Stoner thanks for his quick thinking and effective solution!
:)

Why not just have someone just go around deleting them then? Select a group of people to monitor and delete spam

We are already doing so.

The responsibility for dealing with the SPAM threads can't all be on the staff members' shoulders (Though it mostly should be). Non-staff members (Including you, I and others) can also help to manage the problem by clicking on the "Report" button located in the lower left corner of the first post in the thread (The button has a picture of an exclamation point with rectangle in the background). When the button is clicked, the "Report Post" page will be shown and you can then write a message like "This post is part of a SPAM thread. Please delete the thread." After you submit the message, a staff member should be alerted via PM. Hopefully the staff member who picks it up will then quickly investigate and delete the SPAM thread ASAP. By working together, we all can more effectively deal with this reoccurring problem.
:)

True , websites that do 24/7 moderation are rare and expensive. Major companies like mirosoft can't even moderate their online forums like that. The only site I know who does that effectively is the nexus and they have a lot more admins that we possibly could.

I would suggest maybe some kind of rule on new accounts so they can't post new threads until they post in another thread first. I don't know how fair that is to new members but it could get rid of the thread spam since the bots don't post in other threads.

One problem with that idea is that how do we determine at what maximum amount of posts in other members' various threads would a new member need to exceed in order to be allowed to create their own threads? You have to also consider the "Can of worms" that can be opened with such a rule since we do not know for sure that it really is a bot or an actual person that is posting all of the recent Spam: What if the new "member" floods another member's thread with Spam posts and then having met the requirements of the rule you just mentioned, continues to then create a Spam thread? That would be even more of a mess for the staff to clean up. In case it really is a person doing all of this Spamming that can also read this thread and not a Spambot, then we need to stop giving him or her any more ideas for creating even more mayhem!
:eek:

There is a probationary period for new members (So called "Probationary members") but I am not privy as to exactly what is monitored during that period - I'm more inclined to think that it's mostly post count based (e.g. Once a member has posted a certain amount, he or she is no longer considered by the vBulletin system to be a "Probationary" member and automatically gets promoted to become a "Junior" member) rather than merit based with a staff member actively (Manually) reviewing all of the "Probationary" member's posts and activities before deciding whether or not that "Probationary" member is manually promoted to become a "Junior" member. I've joined sites before that deployed the latter strategy - It allows for a greater proliferation of "Quality" posts rather than useless "Junk" or Spam posts. In such sites, an added incentive for making "Quality" posts and contributing in ways that better the site's community, such so called "Super" members are allowed access to special "Hidden" areas not normally visible to the general membership (Though the incentive part is not practical here - It would not make any sense to allow non-staff members to have access to the mods/admins section no matter how "Super" they may be! The latter strategy could work here but it would be more work for the staff to do so).
:rolleyes:

BTW - I just found a forum thread where someone mentioned your exact idea. Another member there replied that it is possible that Spambots can be programmed to post Spam in other members' threads (I've never programmed a bot before but I can see how it is possible to add that kind of functionality - Maybe with the help of a Perl script that processes forum text using Regular expressions). The bots may not necessarily be limited to posting Spam in their own threads (Read the first post starting with "Lastly about the spammers. ..." and the subsequent reply post) -> http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic...another-forum/
:eek: :cool: