Spam Bots

[Deadly]

If all spam bots could post here instead, that would be great!

In all actuality though, the rush of spam bots recently has been increasing every day to the point where these forums are just spam bot haven. Obviously what we have in place is not cutting it. With the collaborative mind of these forums, we can put a stop to it. Post any ideas you have to get rid of them here and we'll see what works, what doesn't, and what is even possible.

Also, in order to make our (mods) jobs easier, please only report spam that is in a thread already created. We can't scour every corner of these forums looking for spam bots but we can sort through thread titles a whole lot quicker than we can posts. So please only report posts now instead of threads and thank you to all who have been reporting already.

[Zombie Hunter]

There the obvious solution
Get more mods, maybe get an EU mod again :(

[t3rmikxs]

I wanna be mod! Yaaay!

Make captcha more though! Or make some form element during registration that you need to fill inside some random math (13+5) and make it write in words so the correct answer to put inside is eighteen.

Or make some required "choose correct answer" something like yes, no in forms (how to call that... that round buttons :DDD ) Question - Are you: Human ( ) Spambot ( )... to proceed you need to choose spambot, and the spambot will be chosen as the default option, so you have to go and click on the human (as far as I know - spambots dont change this in forms, so they will keep the spambot option)

Sorry for my english, i wrote this really horribly, i hope you understand this :D

[SlainPwner666]

It's quite apparent that they are getting around the Captcha. As T3rmikxs recommended, a poll asking if you are human or not would probably work. I too would like to see some more mods.

[nerVe]

The math thing works well along with the question.

And they're called "radio buttons." :D

[Unspoken Damnation]

More Mods is a must. How many active mods do we actually have now, 2 or 3 with the loss of Steve Cloud?

Also the poll seems to be an easy way to prevent it. Or one of those simple math questions.

[Paradox Viper]

I could so be a Mod. The problem is most of the people here will say the same thing about themselves. I still think a Mod in Europe would help a ton since we would be able to clear the threads that pop up while you lot are sleeping.

[t3rmikxs]

*cough, cough
I live in czech republic, surprisingly in the Europe.. *cough*

nerVe thanks, for the name of that round thingy... :)

[Zorgy]

European mod would be good. Now I wonder. Who's in Europe? Not very many regular posters tbh. Elmo could do it.

[Paradox Viper]

European mod would be good. Now I wonder. Who's in Europe? Not very many regular posters tbh. Elmo could do it.
I wonder who counts as 'regular'? I'm on this sight alot, but don't post constantly.

[t3rmikxs]

Recently, spambots counts as regular. :P

I can say, I post here constantly :)

[Zombie Hunter]

My vote is for Elmo/Lemon, it needs to be someone mature^

[Kenny]

Mods will likely be added if/when it is necessary. At the moment, it doesn't seem to be. Spam posts get deleted extremely quickly.

[Easton Dark]

^ Thanks to many a quick and numerous reports from moi. :D

Hmmmmm suggestions..........

Ok.

Practical - To start a thread, until you have 100 posts, you get asked 10 questions. These questions are incredibly obscure and it will be suggested that you google in the questions for answers. Regular people will type it in google, find the answer, type it down, rinse/repeat, BAM! You've got a thread. Maybe have a selection of 100 or so questions where 10 get selected randomly.

Unpractical - Kill them with fire.

[Deadly]

Some of our mods have very irregular sleeping schedules. They're deleted fairly quickly but it does become tiresome and tedious. Preventing them altogether is the goal here, not adding another mod to delete them. I'm not sure if the math idea is possible, and the poll seems silly. If they put "I'm a Human" means they're actually a bot?

[Bill_the_nonchalant]

I think we're OK for mods like DeAdLy said.

Perhaps one of those text inputs where the text above is irregular and you have to type what it says in the box to prove your human.

Or a more unrealistic approach is to get better soft-wear against the bots.

[N0sySh00ter]

Whats an EU mod?

[Paradox Viper]

Whats an EU mod?
A Moderator from Europe.

[shadowstreak]

You could make it so all new accounts have to be approved by a mod and have a short written statement about why they want to be a member, like a few sentences. That could be tedious for the mods, but could cut down on the amount of spam bots.

[Bill_the_nonchalant]

It's the same guy. Maybe if Lionheart or any of the other higher ups can get a hold of this guys IP address and ban this guy for good. No more new accounts or anything.

[seaniepoo]

I think making it so you have to reach a certain number of posts before you can start a thread would help, but we might get more spam replies.

[SlainPwner666]

Today, whilst on another site, I saw an ad that explained it all to me, and probably why all these spamBOT measures won't work.

"You get paid 15$ for every one of our links posted on a message board, IM client, or Email message. For every 1000 hits we get, it's an extra 20$! Take up virtual advertising today, the way of the future!"

[Easton Dark]

Hey look, another advertisement thread popped up.

[SlainPwner666]

Today, whilst on another site, I saw an ad that explained it all to me, and probably why all these spamBOT measures won't work.

"You get paid 15$ for every one of our links posted on a message board, IM client, or Email message. For every 1000 hits we get, it's an extra 20$! Take up virtual advertising today, the way of the future!"

[one of them]

Stop them from making accounts, I'm sure there is Bot Protection out there that's better than what the forum uses.

[Unspoken Damnation]

3 more spam threads just showed up. This is the first ive really even noticed this happening. How long has it been going on?

[frogopus]

What happened to Dead Fish? He just disappeared. He was a great mod.

I actually don't know. At this point I can't remember if I knew at one time that he was leaving or if he just disappeared. Either way, I haven't heard from him in a long while.

[Deadly]

We've had bots since we moved to vbulletin but it's been getting bad like this since about 4 days ago.

[SickDaza]

A Moderator from Europe.

What happened to Dead Fish? He just disappeared. He was a great mod.

[FilButch]

I think having a required number of posts to be able to post a thread is a realistic solution.
There may be more spam replies but thats alot less annoying than a spam thread.

[Easton Dark]

The problem with that is most people join to make a thread to get one of their questions answered.

[N0sySh00ter]

And they can just Google it or Yahoo! it.

[blah]

Okay, One thing, I can be a good mod, but chances are, yal will say no...

Second thing, I think I told Deadly this but, what about, you have to have 10 posts in order to have a signature and create new threads, that would kill spam so hard...

or ruin good threads, but i think we can get rid of those too.

[Unspoken Damnation]

And they can just Google it or Yahoo! it

That would kinda defeat the purpose of a forum. The forum is a place for people to come and talk and/or ask questions about the game.

[N0sySh00ter]

But easton said that people make threads just to ask 1 question. Thats why I said that.

[blah]

Seriously yal, newbs shouldn't be able to make new threads or have signatures, since that is where all the spam is!

Either that or IP Ban everyone from Africa.

[ZiggY]

Get Lionheart to edit your .htaccess to block heavy-hitting bots and ones with empty user-agent strings.

I've already suggested this once before and nobody seemed to bother listening.
Spambots like this don't like to identify with user-agent strings, so re-routing those to a site like http://www.gofistyourselfyoucocksuckingspambot.com will get rid of the problem.

Really, I know what I'm talking about.

[Deadly]

Get Lionheart to edit your .htaccess to block heavy-hitting bots and ones with empty user-agent strings.

I've already suggested this once before and nobody seemed to bother listening.
Spambots like this don't like to identify with user-agent strings, so re-routing those to a site like http://www.gofistyourselfyoucocksuckingspambot.com will get rid of the problem.

Really, I know what I'm talking about.

Sounds promising. Then again I have no clue what you said.

Some good ideas here! Like I said before though. Extra mods won't solve the problem, only suppress it.

[blah]

i feel ignored...

[Deadly]

I brought your idea up too, blah. I just didn't feel the need to respond to you twice

[Easton Dark]

Get Lionheart to edit your .htaccess to block heavy-hitting bots and ones with empty user-agent strings.

I've already suggested this once before and nobody seemed to bother listening.
Spambots like this don't like to identify with user-agent strings, so re-routing those to a site like http://www.gofistyourselfyoucocksuckingspambot.com will get rid of the problem.

Really, I know what I'm talking about.

He's a BOT!!!

[ZiggY]

I run an online radio station, so things like this tend to happen unfortunately. In a nutshell, you check the logs/stats of visitors of L4D411 and a part of it will show the robots/spiders that have hit the site (one of these being the spambot hitting the forum).

In the list of bots, you'll see how many hits they've made, how much bandwidth they take up, and so on. Each bot has a specific name, for instance, my server has as follows -

- Unknown robot (identified by empty user agent string)
- Yahoo Slurp
- Unknown robot (identified by 'robot')
- Unknown robot (identified by 'spider')
- Unknown robot (identified by 'bot*')
- Unknown robot (identified by 'crawl')
- MSNBot
- Alexa (IA Archiver)
- Unknown robot (identified by hit on 'robots.txt')
- Ask
- MSNBot-media
- Netcraft

.htaccess is a file which every site has, and you're able to edit. By adding a few lines of code, you can block the bot name from accessing the site (or as I said, re-route it to a specific url). Most of the time a spambot isn't going to want to identify and tell you it's a spambot, so it'll have an empty user agent string (such as the example on my list of spiders).

In that case, you can block a spider/robot that doesn't want to identify. You can also add IP addresses, hosts, and domains to .htaccess, meaning they won't be able to access the site whatsoever.

Pretty nifty trick, brah.

[Easton Dark]

I still like my idea more.

[Stuffinator]

1. How about a security question hidden in the rulez needed for registration? We could make it easy to find for users, but hard for bots!
2. How about an extra section for non registered users, bots would post there without registering and you could make this section invisible to loged in users! If thats possible!

[one of them]

It's the Illusive Man I tell ye'

[armored cow]

The end is nigh.

[t3rmikxs]

Oh... now i got idea - it's pretty easy... If you have... let's say <20 you are unable to post links or pictures. Pretty easy. If you make a post with picture or link it will not be posted.

Simple but still very effective.

[Stuffinator]

Which doesn't prevent them from registering! And link-lock can be passed by posting like this "left4dead411 . com" and likewise!

[Deadly]

RAGE! I log on today and deleted 8 more.

[t3rmikxs]

Stuffinator: well I believe once a time there is somee deleting of inactive accounts isnt it?
And bots do not know they message wasnt posted. They'll just believe it was successfuly posted AFAIK...

[Zombie Hunter]

F
M
L
http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/8238/36949509.jpg

[Deadly]

Those are all gone now! Horray for checkboxes!

[Waterboy2go]

I side with the suggestion of no links or images till 20 posts

The end is nigh.

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd2/waterboy2go/543337-3-the-end-is-nigh.jpg

[Easton Dark]

My anger towards these people is growing by an exponential amount every thread I see. I must do something to stem the tide!

[blah]

They speak proper english now... YAY!

[wertan11]

i think we must add a few mods

[SickDaza]

Has anyone else noticed the spambots became more proficient when the adverts were introduced to the site?

[Waterboy2go]

Has anyone else noticed the spambots became more proficient when the adverts were introduced to the site?

Exactly what I told Deadly today over Steam chat...

[wertan11]

their taking over man!

[Easton Dark]

20$ says the newest member, fickbrother, is a bot.

[t3rmikxs]

Make 30$ and we made a deal.

[Stuffinator]

Stuffinator: well I believe once a time there is somee deleting of inactive accounts isnt it?
And bots do not know they message wasnt posted. They'll just believe it was successfuly posted AFAIK...
It's not that hard to figure out if a post was successful or not as there is always a feedback from the browser or website! This can be easily implemented in the bot's source code!

I still think preventing bots from registering is better then preventing them from posting!

[ThoughtThinking]

I think adding a captcha everytime you make a thread would work quite nicely.

[Paradox Viper]

i think we must add a few mods
Reporting for duty. May take a day or two for me to get used to all these new, tempting buttons, but I'll get the hang of it.

[Easton Dark]

With great power, comes great responsibility!

[Boojangels]

Ban everyone, problem solved.

[Paradox Viper]

There's so many little tick boxes and "Moderation" thingies. OH GOD IT'S SO TEMPTING BUT I MUST RESIST.

If Easton's posts start getting edited into "Penis Penis Penis" I swear it was totally not me.

[Easton Dark]

That sounds like something I'd post anyway.........

[SickDaza]

Reporting for duty. May take a day or two for me to get used to all these new, tempting buttons, but I'll get the hang of it.

:) well done. Any other new mods that I havnt noticed?

[Paradox Viper]

:) well done. Any other new mods that I havnt noticed?
Platypus. I don't think he's been on yet, and neither of us were notified beyond having a welcome thread in the moderator bit. Honestly didn't see it coming. Play nice and I won't be forced to go on a banning spree (spambots excluded, naturally).

Back to the topic at hand. Considering this is powered by vBulletin, are there any built-in optional things that could be added to the site that are designed to counter this type of stuff?

[SRXSniper58]

I side with the suggestion of no links or images till 20 posts



http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd2/waterboy2go/543337-3-the-end-is-nigh.jpg
or they cant do anything unless they've been on the page a total of 6 hours actively

[SickDaza]

Platypus. I don't think he's been on yet, and neither of us were notified beyond having a welcome thread in the moderator bit. Honestly didn't see it coming. Play nice and I won't be forced to go on a banning spree (spambots excluded, naturally).

Back to the topic at hand. Considering this is powered by vBulletin, are there any built-in optional things that could be added to the site that are designed to counter this type of stuff?

Unlucky that you can't ban people straight out anymore with the new points system. Muahaha so just try it bitch...

Actually plz don't try.

[Stuffinator]

I think adding a captcha everytime you make a thread would work quite nicely.
And I think new members already have to enter a captcha if they want to make a thread, so the fact that we see alot of new threads from spam bots means, they can bypass the captcha!

[Shrubberyjsc]

Unlucky that you can't ban people straight out anymore with the new points system. Muahaha so just try it bitch...

Actually plz don't try.
Who said we can't ban straight out?

You think we bother giving spambots 'points'?

Hell naw.

[N0sySh00ter]

I'm not sure if anyone said this already, but, I'm sure the bots won't come to this thread and spam.. I'm sure they'll keep creating threads, but you guys can just delete them and ban spammahs.

BANHAMMEH

[Deadly]

You do realize I was kidding when I said that, right?

Anyway, it seem that they have been dying down now. Hopefully I don't eat my words and get spammed right after posting this though! I think we've got enough suggestions, so I'm going to lock this thread for now. If we do something someone suggested and it worked, I'll post it here and let you know which idea we used.

[Deadly]

About that dying down thing. It seems they tricked us! Waited for us to get our guard down then BAM, attacked. The server administrator is still working on trying to get this fixed as well as fixing the server downtime. We shouldn't have that much downtime any more and a fix for the bots *should* be implemented soon. Expect a final attack from the bots! We need to set our defenses up!

[N0sySh00ter]

I'm just waiting for a shitload of spam bots to come and rape us all. I can see it now.. The whole Off Topic thread will be filled with spams. Hopefully not though.

[wertan11]

maybe we should just not allow anyone into the forums for a while till' they give up.

[Paradox Viper]

http://i577.photobucket.com/albums/ss215/Paradox_Tangent/Spam.jpg?t=1266084520

[N0sySh00ter]

That quote reminds me of 300 when the persian army blocked out the sunlight.

[eXfella]

I actually enjoy having these spam bots around.

When nobody else is online they're good company. :)

[N0sySh00ter]

We have another spam bot coming, BrussyFum. You can tell because their Biography always says "Man".

[Easton Dark]

Expect a final attack from the bots! We need to set our defenses up!

Tank traps up and ready sir!

Barbed wires been laid!

If I see another bag of dirt.......

KRAUTS INCOMING!

[Paradox Viper]

That quote reminds me of 300 when the persian army blocked out the sunlight.
Indeed. Look again.

[SRXSniper58]

I found and busted so many spambots yesterday
WHERE WERE THE MODS!??!?!

[BlackCat]

OMG... that can only mean... the Mods ARE the spam bots!! o.0

[t3rmikxs]

Silence. They'll kill you.

[Paradox Viper]

Everybody leave, I need to speak to t3rmikxs ... in private.

[t3rmikxs]

You can ban me. You can ban my kids, but ill spread the truth forever!

[wertan11]

your sig worked with that post perfectly!

[Deadly]

New measures have been implemented. Expect a decrease in spambot activity!

[hunterhunter]

hey....where's that Russian dude

[Bill_the_nonchalant]

hey....where's that Russian dude

Who are you talking about?

[Easton Dark]

New measures have been implemented. Expect a decrease in spambot activity!

Do tell, what has been done to prevent these spambots?!

[Platypus]

Do tell, what has been done to prevent these spambots?!
It's a secret.

[Easton Dark]

It's a secret.

Super secret?

[Deadly]

If I told you, I'd have to ban you.

[one of them]

I'm cool with that, go ahead and spill the beans.

[Nuttz]

I think we can all agree Easton would be no great loss. Now tell us!

[Easton Dark]

Ow

Oh my

Ow ow ow

You hurt my self-esteem

Oooo

The pain

ow

[N0sySh00ter]

Mhm, congratz Platypus on mod.

[Easton Dark]

More arrived today.

They created elaborate (sorta) intro threads, which means we are now getting the few slightly intelligent bots. However, we know their biography will say "man" and their hobbies include their name. We know how to root them out and identify them, and only a few show up now, BURN EM OUT!

[wertan11]

Kill it!!! Kill it with fire!!!

[toonie__]

mod for life!

[Paradox Viper]

All this spam is getting to me. I almost banned toonie on reflex, before I realised he seems to be an actual user.

[FilButch]

If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

I havent seen too many spam threads lately, you guys are either doing a good job or they're just preparing something...

[Platypus]

We're just THAT good.

[Stuffinator]

We're just THAT good.
Or bored...

[REDSHARK]

I've sent friend invites to every spambot :)

[Bloodshed269]

All this spam is getting to me. I almost banned toonie on reflex, before I realised he seems to be an actual user.

I could take the job off your hands for you....

[Paradox Viper]

I could take the job off your hands for you....
I loled. I'm fine thanks.

[Jesus123]

I come back and some random people are mods :/

Well, Platypus I could see him with mod. But Paradox is kinda random.

[Bloodshed269]

I come back and some random people are mods :/

Well, Platypus I could see him with mod. But Paradox is kinda random.

I KNOW! He hasn't even been here a year! Wink Wink.

[N0sySh00ter]

I've sent friend invites to every spambot :)


It can get pretty lonely here when nobodys on.

[Paradox Viper]

I KNOW! He hasn't even been here a year! Wink Wink.
Nudge nudge.

[t3rmikxs]

I've sent friend invites to every spambot :)
Ironically even spambots dont bother to accept them. ;)

[N0sySh00ter]

Ironically even spambots dont bother to accept them. ;)


Hahahha, lmfao.