2151 posts
Location
Auckland, New Zealand
Posted 23 June 2015 - 09:32 AM
I accidentally found myself on
this page and noticed there are some, obviously not real, accounts spamming the status update system.
Now, while it's not the end of the world, it's a waste of server resources and also hides the real ones from sight.
Edited on 23 June 2015 - 07:40 AM
8543 posts
Posted 23 June 2015 - 02:46 PM
There is a report button on every account page. Reporting spammer accounts will get them taken care of in very short order.
1140 posts
Location
Kaunas, Lithuania
Posted 23 June 2015 - 02:54 PM
There is a report button on every account page. Reporting spammer accounts will get them taken care of in very short order.
So you're suggesting that we report all those accounts? There are really a lot of them.
EDIT: WOW, there are HUNDREDS of them, each look unique. I counted them up to the page 118 in the Status Updates page. Looks like it started way back in April.
Edited on 23 June 2015 - 12:58 PM
546 posts
Location
Wageningen, The Netherlands
Posted 23 June 2015 - 03:47 PM
There are way too many status spammers to report individually.
But all spam statuses have some kind of format:
[url=http://spam1.com]spam 1[/url][url=http://spam2.com]spam 2[/url]
I'd suggest searching for this pattern in statuses and banning the status spammers.
8543 posts
Posted 23 June 2015 - 05:48 PM
There aren't any great admin tools built in to the forum software to select account based on status updates. New Members accounts (which all of the spammers are) are already supposedly not allowed to post status updates. I've set that option again, perhaps this time it will stick. We got several reports this morning, all of which are now flagged as spammers. We're doing what we can to combat the spam issue on our end, but unfortunately the tools that the forum software provides are not always up to the job. I may look at disabling the status update feature, as it isn't terribly useful if the system is just choked with spam.
3790 posts
Location
Lincoln, Nebraska
Posted 23 June 2015 - 06:13 PM
Not to mention it's not exactly a widely utilized feature on the forums. I haven't changed mine in ages, and I'm sure the same could be said for a good majority of our userbase.
2679 posts
Location
You will never find me, muhahahahahaha
Posted 23 June 2015 - 06:21 PM
Not to mention it's not exactly a widely utilized feature on the forums. I haven't changed mine in ages, and I'm sure the same could be said for a good majority of our userbase.
I use mine, but I guess I am the exception.
1140 posts
Location
Kaunas, Lithuania
Posted 23 June 2015 - 06:35 PM
Well, I've seen people use it and I'd say they are useful, especially if the ones posting updates are in your friends list. It's like twitter but for forums.
2151 posts
Location
Auckland, New Zealand
Posted 23 June 2015 - 10:55 PM
That's a shame, damn.
If they're not placing a significant server load I'm not sure it's worth removing the system outright. I use it from time to time and the spam is segregated in to it's own area basically.
8543 posts
Posted 24 June 2015 - 04:38 AM
I've cleaned up a few (thousand) spam-appearing status updates. Reporting any new ones will help us keep on top of the problem and flag the spammers to prevent them from posting further updates.
7508 posts
Location
Australia
Posted 24 June 2015 - 11:12 AM
Have also cleaned up a few (hundred) statuses.
2151 posts
Location
Auckland, New Zealand
Posted 24 June 2015 - 11:58 AM
Hmm, as effective removing them is, it doesn't seem like firefighting will work. These have appeared less than an hour after theoriginalbit cleared them. Unless there are things to fix it online, and I'll take a look when I find the time, it seems like we might unfortunately have to admit defeat. I don't really think it's worth the moderator time repeatedly going through them when they just reappear.
Personally, if there's no longer term solution I'd say let it be.
2679 posts
Location
You will never find me, muhahahahahaha
Posted 24 June 2015 - 01:02 PM
I say you ban Faushappelle, you have to stop the problem at it's source. And make a rule that if someone posts 3 times in 4 minutes they have to wait five minutes before their next post.
Edited on 24 June 2015 - 11:03 AM
1140 posts
Location
Kaunas, Lithuania
Posted 24 June 2015 - 01:16 PM
I say you ban Faushappelle, you have to stop the problem at it's source. And make a rule that if someone posts 3 times in 4 minutes they have to wait five minutes before their next post.
Well, the problem here is that what I saw were completely different accounts, at least that's what I saw. I'd say check their email, it seems like it might be the same person and he/she might be reusing some emails. You may also check if those emails were created at something generic like email.com or mail.com. Then you could try not to allow people create accounts with those emails, if forum software allows. Also, check the IP, if it's the same he/she is probably not using proxies and banning the IP should work. If not, then they might be using TOR.
7083 posts
Location
Tasmania (AU)
Posted 24 June 2015 - 01:33 PM
I'd imagine these "people" are XRumer bot posters. If that's the case (and even if it's not XRumer specifically, it's still safe to assume they're bots), then there's not really all that much you can do about it except regularly change the sign-up registration question for the boards (or, well, figure out how to get the "new members can't post status updates" thing to work). I can assure you an IP block won't work, not unless it covers a large range of addresses.
8543 posts
Posted 24 June 2015 - 07:48 PM
The spammers are bots, possibly with human assistance during registration. The email accounts we usually see are gmail, yahoo, msn, outlook, etc. webmail accounts that are also commonly used by legitimate members. As spammers are found, they are flagged as spammers rather than banned outright, which to my understanding, causes the account to appear to work normally, but rejects all submissions. The IP addresses are from all over the place, though IIRC, we've found a /24 or two that had nothing but spam coming from them at the time.
3790 posts
Location
Lincoln, Nebraska
Posted 24 June 2015 - 08:05 PM
Yeah, I fear that without a more robust forum software or anti-spam plugin, this is about as good as it's gonna get. If the spam is limited to a barely utilized section of the forums, then I'm fine. The good news is that the spam is no longer being plastered all over the forums for anyone to see. That was absolute hell for the mods to clean up. especially when it was NSFW content.
1610 posts
Posted 25 June 2015 - 02:26 PM
Would it be possible to write a browser userscript or extension for the mods that would crawl the forums, deleting spam status accounts?
It would be slow and inefficient, but probably better than doing it by hand.
2151 posts
Location
Auckland, New Zealand
Posted 25 June 2015 - 10:47 PM
Would it be possible to write a browser userscript or extension for the mods that would crawl the forums, deleting spam status accounts?
It would be slow and inefficient, but probably better than doing it by hand.
Given you can fairly easily regex them, I'd say it would probably be fairly straight forward really.
The main questions are whether the license allows that and whether the mods would want to I guess.
1140 posts
Location
Kaunas, Lithuania
Posted 25 June 2015 - 10:54 PM
Hmm, those spammers rely on posting links, so, how about simply restricting the status updates so no links would be allowed? I know people like to put links, but maybe only allow links for certain websites, like computercraft.info. pastebin.com is used by spammers too, but I haven't seen any pastebin links yet.
7083 posts
Location
Tasmania (AU)
Posted 25 June 2015 - 11:28 PM
Would it be possible to write a browser userscript or extension for the mods that would crawl the forums, deleting spam status accounts?
I suspect it'd be easier / more effective to just install the missing updates for the board software. What is it now, 3.2.3? About four years old?
2151 posts
Location
Auckland, New Zealand
Posted 26 June 2015 - 02:46 AM
Would it be possible to write a browser userscript or extension for the mods that would crawl the forums, deleting spam status accounts?
I suspect it'd be easier / more effective to just install the missing updates for the board software. What is it now, 3.2.3? About four years old?
Oh it's not up to date? I'd suspect/hope that IP Board would have patches for these issues. It's not free software, the moderators shouldn't be the ones having to clean up the fault of the system.
1847 posts
Location
/home/dannysmc95
Posted 26 June 2015 - 09:43 AM
Would it be possible to write a browser userscript or extension for the mods that would crawl the forums, deleting spam status accounts?
I suspect it'd be easier / more effective to just install the missing updates for the board software. What is it now, 3.2.3? About four years old?
That could work?
2679 posts
Location
You will never find me, muhahahahahaha
Posted 26 June 2015 - 09:56 AM
Would it be possible to write a browser userscript or extension for the mods that would crawl the forums, deleting spam status accounts?
I suspect it'd be easier / more effective to just install the missing updates for the board software. What is it now, 3.2.3? About four years old?
That could work?
Given it does not cost additional money.
214 posts
Location
/home/marcus/
Posted 26 June 2015 - 11:36 AM
Or we could make a custom forum software that has built in anti-spam-thingy :P/> Not only eliminates spam, but it looks cool :D/>
1847 posts
Location
/home/dannysmc95
Posted 26 June 2015 - 11:56 AM
Or we could make a custom forum software that has built in anti-spam-thingy :P/>/> Not only eliminates spam, but it looks cool :D/>/>
That would be awesome, But I can't see an admin going yeah you are welcome to do this… -.-
214 posts
Location
/home/marcus/
Posted 26 June 2015 - 05:03 PM
Or we could make a custom forum software that has built in anti-spam-thingy :P/> Not only eliminates spam, but it looks cool :D/>
That would be awesome, But I can't see an admin going yeah you are welcome to do this… -.-
I don't understand the facepalm at the end of your post, but it would be really good to make this :D/> I have an old unfinished forum-thingy on my old drive, I might finish it :P/> And someone could make a custom theme for it :D/> I don't say that IP.Board isn't working, but the mobile version is really limited and buggy. And I can't post status updates from there :(/>
1847 posts
Location
/home/dannysmc95
Posted 26 June 2015 - 05:25 PM
Or we could make a custom forum software that has built in anti-spam-thingy :P/>/> Not only eliminates spam, but it looks cool :D/>/>
That would be awesome, But I can't see an admin going yeah you are welcome to do this… -.-
I don't understand the facepalm at the end of your post, but it would be really good to make this :D/>/> I have an old unfinished forum-thingy on my old drive, I might finish it :P/>/> And someone could make a custom theme for it :D/>/> I don't say that IP.Board isn't working, but the mobile version is really limited and buggy. And I can't post status updates from there :(/>/>
As in they will not even consider us doing it because we are not staff.
8543 posts
Posted 26 June 2015 - 05:47 PM
While there are a few issues with the current forum software, I do not think Dan would be interested in changing to a different forum software, let alone an unproven homebrew solution. There are a lot of features and controls behind the scenes that make managing the forum easier, which would take significant effort to replicate. This is the sort of decision that only Dan could make, and only Dan could implement, of course.
3790 posts
Location
Lincoln, Nebraska
Posted 26 June 2015 - 05:56 PM
Well the decision for forum software rests solely on dan200. He's the owner of the site, and apart from a few exceptions, is the only one who can access the server files.
One concern we have with moving to a different forum software is migrating the posts from one to the other, because the sql databases may not be compatible, and would need some heavy migration scripts so that everything transfers properly. It's by no means an easy task, and data retention is the major concern with switching over.
1847 posts
Location
/home/dannysmc95
Posted 26 June 2015 - 06:33 PM
Personally I would just run a chron job.. and do some simple spam sniffing of the databases to delete what is spam… That is what I did on the old forums I was staff off and that worked perfectly.
223 posts
Location
Minecraft in Minecraft in Minecraft in ComputerCraft... in Minecraft
Posted 27 July 2015 - 01:03 PM
Huh, looks like these spambots don't know that this forum can't have BBCode tags in the status update of this forum (Or is it just because of the forum software?)
1610 posts
Posted 28 July 2015 - 10:31 PM
Huh, looks like these spambots don't know that this forum can't have BBCode tags in the status update of this forum (Or is it just because of the forum software?)
They're probably just generic spambots targeting all IP.Board forums. They don't waste resources trying to figure out how to format spam messages and just go with whatever the majority of forums use.
1140 posts
Location
Kaunas, Lithuania
Posted 29 July 2015 - 07:19 AM
I still wonder, maybe there's a plugin with which itwould be possible to not allow posting of staruses that include url tags, or urls. I feel like that is all we would nees to stop those bots.
1847 posts
Location
/home/dannysmc95
Posted 29 July 2015 - 09:52 AM
I still wonder, maybe there's a plugin with which itwould be possible to not allow posting of staruses that include url tags, or urls. I feel like that is all we would nees to stop those bots.
Maybe but it stops us as well from adding links…
1140 posts
Location
Kaunas, Lithuania
Posted 29 July 2015 - 10:30 AM
Yeah, but the bots are posting tags. Maybe something like a word blacklist may help? I think this kind of thing might already be in the system. So you'll only have to blacklist '[url=' and ''. Of course, the blacklist might simply remove the words, instead of not allowing to post, which would not help.
Edited on 29 July 2015 - 08:31 AM
1847 posts
Location
/home/dannysmc95
Posted 29 July 2015 - 10:43 AM
Yeah, but the bots are posting tags. Maybe something like a word blacklist may help? I think this kind of thing might already be in the system. So you'll only have to blacklist '[url=' and ''. Of course, the blacklist might simply remove the words, instead of not allowing to post, which would not help.
In all honesty I really can't see any of the forum staff doing anything about it… but yeah a word blacklist would be good!
53 posts
Location
Minecraft
Posted 30 July 2015 - 05:11 AM
What about editing the permissions for quests to comment on status updates?
Does our forum software support that?
7508 posts
Location
Australia
Posted 30 July 2015 - 09:33 AM
Yeah, but the bots are posting tags.
and so are you. the post-processor on the forums converts your links into tags as well, otherwise it would never show clickable links.
1140 posts
Location
Kaunas, Lithuania
Posted 30 July 2015 - 10:57 AM
and so are you. the post-processor on the forums converts your links into tags as well, otherwise it would never show clickable links.
As far as I know tags don't work in Status Updates. That's why we can see them in the bots' messages.
673 posts
Posted 30 July 2015 - 04:59 PM
I thought I was the only person who noticed this but apparently not.
7508 posts
Location
Australia
Posted 31 July 2015 - 02:46 AM
As far as I know tags don't work in Status Updates. That's why we can see them in the bots' messages.
The bots wouldn't necessarily put the tags in, the forum software could do it too, just like how if I were to put a link right here –>
https://www.google.com <– the forum software places tags around it so it becomes this [
url="
https://www.google.com"]https://www.google.com[/
url].
Post-processing happens at the time of posting, regardless of whether it is supported or not.
Edited on 31 July 2015 - 12:48 AM
1140 posts
Location
Kaunas, Lithuania
Posted 31 July 2015 - 05:39 AM
The bots wouldn't necessarily put the tags in, the forum software could do it too, just like how if I were to put a link right here –>
https://www.google.com <– the forum software places tags around it so it becomes this [
url="
https://www.google.com"]https://www.google.com[/
url].
Post-processing happens at the time of posting, regardless of whether it is supported or not.
Those bots are putting the tags themselves, just look at the links. I also just tested and the forums can deal with links nicely. A word blacklist might help, depending on how it works.
957 posts
Location
Web Development
Posted 10 August 2015 - 11:00 PM
Status spam is still very real. Maybe this could help?
https://community.in...comment=2318013Is there really no way to prevent these fake accounts from being created?
Edited on 10 August 2015 - 09:12 PM
779 posts
Location
Kerbin
Posted 06 September 2015 - 10:01 AM
Does the forum software allow reCpatcha?
818 posts
Location
Wherever you want me to be
Posted 18 September 2015 - 02:02 PM
ban-ip maybe?
957 posts
Location
Web Development
Posted 19 September 2015 - 04:10 PM
ban-ip maybe?
Too easy to change an IP, and too much work for the admins, so many get created every day.
779 posts
Location
Kerbin
Posted 02 October 2015 - 10:28 AM
Just reported 3 of them in the past 30 mins…
Theyre watching their own profile a long time.
779 posts
Location
Kerbin
Posted 02 October 2015 - 12:11 PM
http://imgur.com/OsssTIxAlmost sure that those who are viewing their profiles are spammers.
Edit: tried a member filter: today registred, 0 posts. 10/9 randomly chosen are spammers, there's totally 4 pages of them
Edit2:
Im stopping reporting they is… too many of them.
Sorry admins
Edited on 02 October 2015 - 04:18 PM
8543 posts
Posted 03 October 2015 - 02:03 AM
I cleared out a bunch of the spam again, and added the status update restriction to the Validating group as well. I'm not sure why that group was allowed to post status updates in the first place, but hopefully the change will help.
224 posts
Posted 04 October 2015 - 06:32 AM
Why can't we use cloud flare?
818 posts
Location
Wherever you want me to be
Posted 20 October 2015 - 09:45 AM
ok, this is getting plain stupid now.
i've found some new accounts, but instead of status updates, they've literally just put it in the website URL and "About Me" section.
we're gonna have to clear out the just say month old validating accounts.
8543 posts
Posted 20 October 2015 - 03:48 PM
I regularly clear out inactive accounts with zero posts. I'll look at the permissions for profile customization, but at least that has to be explicitly looked for.