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Sasha Pachev
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« on: March 25, 2009, 01:35:00 pm » |
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Recently we have been flooded with spam posts. To address the problem I switched the forum sign ups to moderator approved. If things get worse, and they probably will at some point, I will code up moderator approval for blog sign-ups as well.
I do have an idea of how they got past the anti-bot image. But given that it compares in grossness to the stuff they were posting, I will spare the innocent from the details.
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Dallen
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« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2009, 02:53:48 pm » |
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Glad to see you found a solution. Thanks Sasha.
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Mike Davis
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« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2009, 03:38:41 pm » |
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I run a discussion forum where I have also implemented moderated approval of new members. Lately I have been getting floods of user account requests and its a real pain to weed out the legitimate ones. I'd love to know how they get around the captcha code to submit these bogus requests.
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-Mike
Running without hills is like motorcycling without corners.
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Dustin Ence
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« Reply #3 on: March 25, 2009, 09:25:48 pm » |
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Thanks for addressing the obscene spam issue Sasha.
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Sasha Pachev
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« Reply #4 on: March 26, 2009, 03:47:10 pm » |
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Mike:
They fetch the image from the server and show it to real people in exchange for access to their products. Because of the extreme popularity of obscene material they will have somebody to show it to within a few seconds of fetching it from your server.
I have received about 10 or so requests for forum membership since turning on the feature, and all of them were bogus. If I start getting too many I will hack the forum software adding a field "Give me a good reason why you should be on this forum" or something like that maybe phrased in proper public relations language. If that phrase is not there or is too short, or fails spell check, or does not have any running terms, give the user an error. Or maybe ask a question, such as How long is the marathon? I doubt they will code a bot to get around this customization.
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Mike Davis
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« Reply #5 on: March 26, 2009, 06:33:28 pm » |
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Thanks Sasha,
I like the idea of asking a question on the form. I'm going to try adding a required field that needs a specific value entered to continue.
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-Mike
Running without hills is like motorcycling without corners.
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James Winzenz
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« Reply #6 on: March 27, 2009, 11:29:17 pm » |
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Got another one from a "LidiaSam" in the random stuff, although it was not obscene . . . but check out the end of the message. Unless this user was already registered before you made the change, they are still somehow getting through.
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Sasha Pachev
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« Reply #7 on: March 30, 2009, 03:25:44 pm » |
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I did a fairly thorough cleanup of the member list. After seeing a list of 18 approval requests, all of them from bots, that have accumulated over the weekend I also disabled direct account creation. The only way into the forum now for those who are not already in is if you have a blog.
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Lulu
Lurker
Posts: 44
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« Reply #8 on: June 23, 2009, 06:07:45 am » |
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Sasha,
When I went to enter my workout for this morning, an ad came up that I thought you should be aware of. It says "***************?" and is for ***** **** fitness. It comes complete with a ...... I am not sure you would want your youngsters to see that.
Feel free to delete this post when you read it or I will.
Lulu
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« Last Edit: June 23, 2009, 06:31:12 pm by Lulu »
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Sasha Pachev
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« Reply #9 on: June 23, 2009, 12:11:21 pm » |
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Lulu:
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I caught it as well when entering my data this morning and took measures immediately. If any of you ever catch anything inappropriate notify me ASAP.
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Mike Davis
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« Reply #10 on: July 12, 2009, 08:51:42 pm » |
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I just had an ad for bikerpersonals.org show up on my page that was a little racy for the intended audience.
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-Mike
Running without hills is like motorcycling without corners.
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Benn Griffin
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« Reply #11 on: November 06, 2009, 10:09:03 pm » |
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How do bots come to overtake a running blog site? Just wondering.
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