[tyboogie]

hey guys,

i need some help. there are these crazy spammers on the design studio press forum, and i have no idea how to stop them from posting this crap. they post a link to some porn...but i think its for a plugin that may have spyware/virus stuff attached. anyways..they keep creating new user accounts everyday..and continue to post these annoying links! any ideas on how to stop them? i would love to physically confront these/this punk.

look for "hated"
http://www.designstudiopress.com/forum/vbulletin/index.php

thanks for the help

tyler

[Affected]

Does your forum software allow you to use a captcha as an anti-bot measure? Or for a more labour-intensive solution, requiring each new user to be approved by the admins? (don't know how easy it would be to distinguish a bot-generated account and a bona fide one this way)

[Jabo]

They have been around here too. And on CA aswell. Just make sure you delete the entries, because if someone clicks the link, they'll surely have a system that makes sure that it's a visited board and not an empty one.

[Sumaleth]

Spam bots are something everyone has to deal with at the moment. The CAPTCHA systems of all the main forum scripts are beatable by the bots, and even manual verification isn't a guarantee to stop it.

I delete up to 10 a day from this forum, but I've seen worse on other sites.

We're all waiting for the main forum scripts to add next-gen CAPTCHA systems. Though even then they'll never completely stop spam because a portion of it is created by hand.

If you see spam on a forum, never click the links in the post and never reply to it (because that bumps the thread). Only option is to quietly fume.
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Art Links Archive -- Artists and Tutorials

[Affected]

Yea, I guess short of closing the forum to the public and requiring would-be members to submit some kind of portfolio or such and also requiring an interview you're not going to stop it. Even these measures wouldn't stop a really determined spammer.

[tyboogie]

crap..i guess were sol

i would love to find out who/where these people are..it sucks they can get away with this sort of stuff..theyre spreading viruses..which can really screw peoples comps up. not cool!

[burn0ut]

Just saw a thread about this on ca.org aswell. It looks like Most of the spam they get is in their Art Discussion and Photography sections. I wonder if simply changing the the categories name could this make a difference?

Ty, they also have a discussion section on dsp, do you see most of the spam in that section?

[Sumaleth]

Most do spam into the same forum, and I think it's based on the forum id number, not the name. Changing it doesn't help.

We also have some spam posted into threads. This isn't as common, but when it happens you'll see the same reply posted into about 5 or 6 of the latest threads in different forums.
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Art Links Archive -- Artists and Tutorials

[tyboogie]

here are the punks that are spamming..hoping youll download a trojan virus..then youll download their crappy spyware program. read the last paragraph on the page. morons

warning: DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS BS PROGRAM:
http://www.antivermins.com/?aff=334


we should totally get more info on them..and mass email them alot or somn. we should fight back somehow

ty

[tyboogie]

BTW

are these spam posts done by bots somehow? or are they some pathetic people who actually go in and create new usernames everyday and post these links to viruses? pretty sad if theyre real people.

[sweetums]

I'm running a forum on PHPBB beta 3, and the anti-spam (so far) has been outstanding.
I have it set up so that you have to type the authentication code before you are sent the validation e-mail, and it stopped the 2-3 a week I was getting before.

Hopefully, they'll get a few more small kinks worked out before the next release.
_________________
Life is short. Expect nothing, enjoy everything.
That which does not kill you should make you wiser...

[tyboogie]

were getting like 15 a day on design studio press..sooo annooooyiinnggg
does anyone know if these are bots or real people posting?

[Sumaleth]

They're mostly bots. For every 100 spam posts here I've seen perhaps 1 that looked more likely to be by hand.

I managed to fix it on another forum by tweaking the code that displays the verification image. It didn't take much, just changed the size of the image a little and changed the colors, and the bots instantly stopped being able to post spam. They might eventually get around it, but I think I can pretty easily tweak it again.

Unfortunately that forum uses Invision Power Board so the tweaks won't apply directly here (or Design Studio). But I plan to see if the same sort of thing will work here when I get back.

Probably be worth you finding the verification code in vBulletin and see if tweaking the resulting image unbalances the bots. Might be able to find some pre-made patches using google too.
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Art Links Archive -- Artists and Tutorials

[tyboogie]

thanks alot for the info sumaleth..ill look into that

ty