Spam prevention

News around the development. Release information.
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Trilarion
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Spam prevention

Post by Trilarion »

Sorry for the hassle, but due to everlasting fights against spammers, mostly russian, I had to introduce strict measures. One is the security question whose answer should be straightforward, but different from all the other forums in the world. It's used for registrations as well as guest postings. The second is the limitation of some rights for newly registered or guest users. Of course once you have registered you can post right away.

P.S.: In the meantime the spam attacks have decreased a lot and some measures have been lifted. So once you registered you basically can do anything you like. Guest posting however is only possible with approval iirc.
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Trilarion
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Re: Spam prevention

Post by Trilarion »

The spam attacks have deceased since the introduction of more strict limitations than in the default phpbb installation. However we have about 30% members without any post ever. It could be that they are spam bots somehow confused or interested people that lost interest somehow in the mean time. Anyway there is no reason to have them registered (also for them and their private data). I will therefore regularly send reminders to members with zero posts and without reaction will delete them. Of course everybody can register again at any time and maybe once interested people can find interest again. :)
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Trilarion
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Re: Spam prevention

Post by Trilarion »

There were some spam attacks on the Home site of the project lately that somehow bypassed the akismet spam prevention. If this continues I will replace the simple blog by a wordpress installation.
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Trilarion
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Re: Spam prevention

Post by Trilarion »

Lately we had some fake accounts in the community forum (all originating from Pakistan) but they posted mostly nonsense message without advertisement. It's quite easy to detect but a bit annoying and could happen in the next days again. I hope for an upgrade of the software phpbb with better automatic spam prevention.
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Trilarion
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Re: Spam prevention

Post by Trilarion »

Regarding the fake accounts from Pakistan I discovered that actually all new registrations since October were spam accounts from Pakistan. Some even posted kind of intelligent posts but at most posted once and changed their signature after a while to show advertisement. I had to delete them all. It seems like they are paid humans or automatic answering technology has really improved a lot. If this continues I will have to lock certain IP addresses out (temporarily or permanent) which would be unfortunate for a genuine Pakistani guest but the chances for that are rather small.
Willem
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Re: Spam prevention

Post by Willem »

Trilarion wrote:... It seems like they are paid humans or automatic answering technology has really improved a lot...
Waaw, didn't know those guys were that desperate to get a job :roll:
Test Guest

Re: Spam prevention

Post by Test Guest »

After the upgrade of the board to version 3.1.3 I turned on reCaptcha from Google. Well, let's see if this does the job...
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Trilarion
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Re: Spam prevention

Post by Trilarion »

I tested Guest posting with the new anti spam measure and hope it will work well. I had some problems with IE9 which kind of hangs (you had to click the submit button twice). I hope most people are using different browsers though.
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Trilarion
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Re: Spam prevention

Post by Trilarion »

reCaptcha from Google does not seem to stop the spam accounts, so another hint that they are paid humans. Fortunately these accounts are still relatively easy to identify. If however I delete a genuine registration I apologize here. Please use the contact form for any complaints.
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Trilarion
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Posts: 845
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2012 9:27 pm
Location: Central germany

Re: Spam prevention

Post by Trilarion »

Due to continued spam I had to disable guest posting. Sorry, you'll have to either register or use the contact form now.

Also I updated to phpbb 3.1.4.
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