In the last 12 hours I've had to report eight posts by spam bots. You know the kind, a bunch of rambling nonsense sentences and a link to their product page? It would seem that these bots are able to figure out whatever simple means of authentication that is used to vet new members. I encourage everyone to report such posts when they see them so that the moderators and admins can clean them up and ban the offending bots. Thanks.
We're trying to keep on top of these spam posts but, yes, indeed, your reports are VERY welcome and much appreciated guys.
They have a Captcha on the registration form and require e-mail confirmation. Not sure what else they can do. So must be a human and not a bot posting spam right?
This issue continues to worsen. I had to report 10 of them this morning - hindered by the fact that the flood control prevents me from reporting more frequently than every 20 seconds (but there are no apparent measures to stop bots from posting). Can they be banned by IP/subnet? Can the phrases/sites they talk about be linked to a profanity filter somehow? Whatever means are used to screen new applicants, it's not stopping these bots. Perhaps registration could somehow be made more robust to stop these spammers. Also, a lot of forums moderate the first few messages so that a new member's posts don't appear until reviewed. After perhaps three posts, then they have normal posting privileges. That's guaranteed to stop these accounts, which seem to exist to fire off a single post or profile comment.
As already suggested in the other thread, new users should not be alowed to do any postings directly, until they have 5 or more verified postings. Many forums do it this way. Other possibility is to add one state of the art human-check feature to the forum-registration, for example: 1. a simple math excersise 2. simple question / answer, related to the game or website 3. recognise any object from few pictures. etc ...
well.. the meaning of community is also to keep it safe and clear, it's a matter of duty! Already reported every time as i see them glad to support all of you!
I support this idea. If the Dev's are interested, I'd be willing to volunteer my time towards supporting this. I used to do this all the time back in the day when Yahoo Groups were popular. Dev's/Mod's feel free to PM or e-mail me if you want to chat more about this.
