Page 1 of 1

Zombie Invasion

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2016 3:06 pm
by GriffonSpade
So, these spam bots are clearly zombies, as it's evident that their brains have rotted. Do they REALLY think that spamming their crap like that makes it more likely someone will click their links? If anything, spamming like that makes it LESS likely. :|

Re: Zombie Invasion

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 11:30 am
by louis94
Wikipedia wrote:Some spam messages also simply contain tags and hyperlinks intended to boost search engine ranking rather than target human readers.
On ubuntu-fr.org they have a phpbb plugin to deal with spam. When a post is reported with "spam" in the information field, it's automatically removed -- any abuse being severely punished when the moderators check the deletions.

Re: Zombie Invasion

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 5:27 am
by mir3x
Just disallow non ascii titles and that korean spam would be fixed for now.

Re: Zombie Invasion

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 4:05 pm
by GriffonSpade
mir3x wrote:Just disallow non ascii titles and that korean spam would be fixed for now.
Wow, that IS a good idea. Blocking any non English-standard roman letters from the thread titles would certainly knock these particular ones out. That, along with maybe 10 minutes between making threads...it might be annoying, but how often does one REALLY need to make two threads?

Re: Zombie Invasion

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2017 7:31 pm
by GriffonSpade
Another idea that might help is just adding a 10 new threads per day cap. I doubt anyone ever needs 5 new threads in a day, much less 10.

Re: Zombie Invasion

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:17 pm
by Lachu
IN my opinion there's simple solution for zombie invasion. Add draft post mode and:
- Makes all post saved in time period (related to previous post) less than 30 minutes automatically will not be published, but go to draft
- First post for each new user of this forum should been added to draft. Each next post will be in draft area until moderator don't accept all post(so zombie will create first post and next and next and bam - no post will leave out draft arena; normal user creates first post and wait until moderator accept it)
- Moderator must accept each post in draft arena.

Re: Zombie Invasion

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2017 12:38 pm
by Corbeau
So, all these suggestions, any reaction from the admin force?

Is it possible to limit new posts per minute? I'm guessing "only 3 threads in 5 minutes AND only 4 new threads per 30 minutes AND 5 per 60 minutes" would be reasonable, if it can be done.

Or get more mods/admins who can react more swiftly. This thing has been at it for two hours at a very steady pace of one new thread per minute.

Re: Zombie Invasion

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2017 7:34 pm
by JTN
That would be me...

Many of the suggestions would need coding. I don't really want to get into the business of writing and maintaining PHP extensions; I have enough other Freeciv admin to do as it is. Also, I've been trying to avoid much customisation, to avoid pain on upgrades (we're overdue one). I haven't found any trustworthy-looking extensions that look helpful; I've been a bit disappointed by the range of phpBB extensions, to be honest.

I was futzing around with a non-coding solution to limiting initial posts using existing phpBB facilities, but then the rate of the really bad hundreds-of-East-Asian-c*s*no-threads spam runs dropped off hugely, and it fell down my to-do list. Probably too fragile to be worth the effort really.

I did install the extension for http://www.stopforumspam.com/ a while back. It isn't super effective, but it blocks about half of registration attempts maybe? I think it's more use against traditional spammers than the specific c*s*no technique that's plagued us.

More mods> might be useful, but I don't know that any of the admin team are more likely to be around at the times I'm not (UK/Europe working day and night time). I'm generally on once a day, and can swat a spam account and all their posts in a few clicks when I do turn up. Apologies for the inconvenience in the meantime.

Re: Zombie Invasion

Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 8:08 am
by Corbeau
JTN wrote: the rate of the really bad hundreds-of-East-Asian-c*s*no-threads spam runs dropped off hugely

Image

If you need a mod to clear stuff like that up, I volunteer. I hang out here throughout the day.

Re: Zombie Invasion

Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2018 3:52 pm
by Wahazar
Maybe change question required for registering? I'm pretty sure that current answer (freeciv launch date) is somewhat in darknet spambots database.