O2 Joggler Forum

The spammers are getting a bit annoying again - would it be possible to ban new users from posting messages with URLs or moderating their first 2 or 3 messages?

not without some forum mods that I dont have time to do right now. Plus as the current spammers are human, they will probably still manage to get around that too. I'll look into some options in the meantime perhaps by banning some ip ranges.

And I'll just keep deleting as I spot them!

I've highlighted a few, but I thought it has been pretty good for the past few weeks, in that I haven't seen any that I would consider SPAM, and checking the forum has become a daily necessity for me. Must have missed a few...

Still compared to other forums I have seen, there is very little SPAM here.

dwl99 is right. There's been a flurry of spam over the past week. Maybe they've been zapped before you've seen them. A nice mix of ufo sightings, people selling kitckens, financial services and one lady selling her body.

I have enabled some additional anti spam measures. there was a whole load of spam tonight. annoying.

I just removed another spammer who registered before I introduced the additional anti spam meaasures. Their registration would have been blocked (using ip block lists, and other tables shared with other forums etc).

go get 'em tiger!

I'm a bit baffled. I don't really visit any other forums. Is it normal for people to post the kind of sex advertising we've been getting recently?

There has just been a large increase in phpbb spam recently. and no doubt a combination of automation + manual captcha solving etc. the last lot of spam to get on here was from non blacklisted ips or from earlier registrations so it got through (I didnt actually check i just deleted it in a rush). the actual number of attempted spam registrations is massive. some blocked by captcha, some by the ip filters.

I used to run a couple of phpBB forums and every so often there would be a similar flurry of spammer activity. It's as if there's a spammer forum somewhere (wouldn't it be great to go troll THAT forum, eh? ) where they post exploits for phpBB and every time a new one is found they all go out and arm their spambots with the new exploit to go wreak havoc. Most of them don't even go through the usual page navigation that a human would, because the exploits just let them get through to the minimum functions required to register, acknowledge registration and post a message.

I gave up in the end because I didn't have time to delete all the spam posts and maintain all the phpBB updates, which were a pain to apply if you've done *any* customisation whatsoever...

Here too; the Joggler forum is one of only a few that I visit lately. Lately turning into a recluse of sorts.

That said I recently re-registered on another Technical forum and they redid their captcha stuff. I have never seen anything like this before. Its a picture/drawing that you have to put together like a puzzle to validate your authentication or registration. I was totally impressed with what I saw.

Whoa!! Spam gone mad tonight.

I just deaded them

Does anyone actually understand some of the recent spam we've been getting. They seem to be long paragraphs of garbled, amalgamated, disjointed bits of rubbish. What's the purpose of these i wonder, or isn't there supposed to be one?

What about a activation via email? no automatic subscription and only creation of the accounts by the Forum admin, I know is not very confortable and it's "dirty job to do" but I don't think we have hundreds of subscription per day :/

People want to subscribe and post, rather than wait for an admin. It's also easy to remove the spam we get (that isn't really that much), than to check every sign up.

BuZz, I'm not complaining about the quantity of spam. It happens and is easy to report. I'm truly curious as to the content of the recent stuff. I understand the sales spam but this gobbledygook - i don't get it?

I was replying to Leonardo btw

I assume the text/nonsense is about attempting to foil any anti-spam software that looks for patterns/words etc (and making each spam "unique".

BuZz wrote:I assume the text/nonsense is about attempting to foil any anti-spam software that looks for patterns/words etc.

Ooooohhhh. Ok. That makes sense, in an odd kinda way. Thanks!

And btw, I wouldn't ask to add to your workload for spam - you seem to have enough plates spinning!!