The spambots are back!

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Andrew Lee
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The spambots are back!

#1 Post by Andrew Lee »

Today, I checked the moderator control panel to find a shocking 276 spam entries to wade through!

When we updated to the latest version of phpBB, I decided to try out the wonderful reCaptcha V2.0 antispam built-in plugin to see if it will work it keeping the spambots out. As predicted, technology is no match for cheap human bot farms.

As such, I have reverted back to the Q&A plugin for registration (where we include a link to a forum topic that lists the answers and can be updated at will).

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webfork
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Re: The spambots are back!

#2 Post by webfork »

Thanks for keeping up with that. Sorry that's an ongoing problem.

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JohnTHaller
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Re: The spambots are back!

#3 Post by JohnTHaller »

Have you tried integrating StopForumSpam.com yet? There is a phpbb plugin for it: http://stopforumspam.com/mods#link_phpbb
PortableApps.com - The open standard for portable software | Support Net Neutrality

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Andrew Lee
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Re: The spambots are back!

#4 Post by Andrew Lee »

JohnTHaller wrote:Have you tried integrating StopForumSpam.com yet? There is a phpbb plugin for it: http://stopforumspam.com/mods#link_phpbb
No. Thanks for reminding me again. Will definitely install it soon.

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smaragdus
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Re: The spambots are back!

#5 Post by smaragdus »

User ammandaaaaaloriiiii is definitely a spammer- it is advertising a commercial product- two comments were deleted, two new appeared.

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Midas
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Re: The spambots are back!

#6 Post by Midas »

@smaragdus: I just deleted two additional SPAM comments in entries and issued a warning to said user.

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smaragdus
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Re: The spambots are back!

#7 Post by smaragdus »

@Midas
Best warning is account deletion if you ask me. I spotted four posts by this "user"- all irrelevant, all blatant advertisements of one and the same commercial product. This "user" obviously registered with malicious intent to do harm so don't be mild with spammers, don't be merciful, just slit their throats.

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__philippe
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Re: The spambots are back!

#8 Post by __philippe »

smaragdus wrote: Wed May 16, 2018 4:25 am @Midas... don't be merciful, just slit their throats.
Motion Seconded ! :twisted:
Spoiler!   
Image
Last edited by __philippe on Wed May 16, 2018 6:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Midas
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Re: The spambots are back!

#9 Post by Midas »

Bear with me, I would if only I knew how... frickin' noobs. :oops:

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__philippe
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Re: The spambots are back!

#10 Post by __philippe »

Image @Andrew @webfork

...Recalling Old Hands on the bridge... :wink:

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webfork
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Re: The spambots are back!

#11 Post by webfork »

Midas wrote: Wed May 16, 2018 6:14 am Bear with me, I would if only I knew how... frickin' noobs. :oops:
All set

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smaragdus
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Re: The spambots are back!

#12 Post by smaragdus »

@__philippe
Do you have your cute image in higher resolution?

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__philippe
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Re: The spambots are back!

#13 Post by __philippe »

@ smaragdus See PM

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smaragdus
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Re: The spambots are back!

#14 Post by smaragdus »

@__philippe
Thank you!

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lintalist
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Re: The spambots are back!

#15 Post by lintalist »

Somewhat related. I noticed that just now a "registered user" was online, Majestic-12 [Bot] - that is a crawler for commercial company - website: majestic . com - basically they eat your bandwidth and try to sell the data (metrics) for profit for their service ( has to do with SEO, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_en ... timization ) - personally I would bad them - they won't bring traffic to this site :-)

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