A secret....

[Dien Rice]

Originally Posted by Adman

Yah...Right! Click on this and you are "Dead Dog Meat!"

When are you guys (Dien, Gordon J and Michael) going to STOP allowing "Anyone" to post here?

We've had a torrent of people trying to "spam" here in recent days... These were almost all "registered" users (which means, they "registered" before posting).

Board spammers can write software now which can read those "Captcha" images. So they use their software to go to forums like this, register, then post a lot of spam. I've put in some extra security things in place now to make it a little tougher for them to do that.

I'm sorry for some of the spam that made it through. I'll always be vigilant in fighting spam.

My "philosophy" is to hopefully make things as easy as possible for people who use the forum, while of course keeping out the "bad guys"! Unfortunately, everything you do to keep out the "bad guys" tends to make it a little more complicated for everybody else... So you have to try to find a balance.

Because of some recent spam that was posted, I've just put in place moderation rules so that people who are posting anonymously won't have their posts appear immediately. Instead, they will go into a moderation queue, then they'll appear once they are approved. (This is not directed at those great people who post anonymously, but instead its because of some recent very offensive anonymous-spam which was just posted.) Registered users probably won't notice a thing.

Sorry to everyone about these problems... We'll keep the spammers out! It's a little bit like a "cold war"... As they develop better and better "offensive weapons", we need to develop better "defensive weapons" to keep them out too!

Thanks for understanding...

Best wishes,

Dien

Dien,

While Board Moderation of Anonymous Posters is a reasonable thing... it is Very time consuming.

I've just found out... Spam... a Sudden Increase on boards like this... is not just here. Check out this Thread about Spammers getting around Image Verification http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=286535

Steve has some good things to say. And the idea on the last post on page one, could be all that's needed. This way, the process is Automated and doesn't require a Mod to spend extra time verifying posts.

Michael Ross

Dien and Michael,

For your info just incase you're not aware...

Of course Google unfortunately gives Top spots to particular keyword topics that maybe should be filtered a little better...

Once the word gets out, the problems and/or solutions continue expanding all over the web...

And since many subjects contain double sided need to know info, what can you really do...

http://www.spam-whackers.com/blog/20...seo-solutions/
http://www.ihelpyou.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27575

Phil

[Ankesh]

Thanks Dien.

I think installing the akismet plugin should take care of 99% of the spam.
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=118421

And - instead of adding a moderation queue for anonymous posters, just make it so that anonymous posters can post no links. Only registered posters can post links. It'll save a lot of time.

Take away the linking abilities and the spam should go away.

I don't know if it's a "built in" or not, but I've seen several boards where you not only had to register, but you couldn't get a link (even a sig file) to work until you'd posted at least "x" number of times.

Pete

Lee used Akismet on his site and it stopped the garbage completely. Worth a try. I couldn't remember the name of it...thanks, Ankesh.

I believe adding a question to the registration would only work a bit simply because many spammers are doing the original post and then turning it over to the bots, as another one of the posts referenced mentioned. A work around that might be the same solution as ABlake's forum, for example, (as mentioned in Pete's post above). New posters find it frustrating (but tolerable) but spammers wouldn't bother with the hassle.

Sandi Bowman