Spam warnings!

[Princess Yuki Mcnight]

1. Eh kinda I pop in once in awhile

2. No fucking clue X3

[terminator101]

Originally Posted by FlamingCreeper

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. ...

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!

[Skarlet]

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

[Ryuko Matoi]

We are already doing so.

[terminator101]

Originally Posted by Skarlet

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

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.

[Rye]

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.

[terminator101]

Originally Posted by Rye

... 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. ...

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!


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).


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/