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[scifi]

Even cats are able to break these simple rule sets!



But seriously though.

Either force people to respond to questions.

Or use the Moderate New Members feature. This allows you to validate new members before they are classified as registered members and are allowed to post. By reviewing the answers given in custom fields, you will be able to quickly determine if this new registration is a spammer.

This can however put some strain on moderators , or if a very dedicated human spammer goes through the trouble of filling all of that.

[SinbadEV]

Even cats are able to break these simple rule sets!



But seriously though.

Either force people to respond to questions.

Or use the Moderate New Members feature. This allows you to validate new members before they are classified as registered members and are allowed to post. By reviewing the answers given in custom fields, you will be able to quickly determine if this new registration is a spammer.

This can however put some strain on moderators , or if a very dedicated human spammer goes through the trouble of filling all of that.

It's also super annoying and scares away new users who are coming to the forums for troubleshooting help... I think we can just live with the spam... the filters will help discourage them but otherwise it's an acceptable risk.

[Jools]

The didn't opt to use "kit∈hen" or even kitzchen, they just added spaces. Can we program the filter to remove spaces before it considers the word to be filtered?

Nice cat btw!

[yuritch]

Now they used some Unicode character (this one: ₪) to replace letter n. Those are humans, they can come up with new ways to fool the filter rather easily...

[Google_Frog]

What is the point of using the unicode characters to bypass the filter? I assumed that they spam forums to boost their relevance as seen by search engines. Search engines would not pick up on misspellings so their aim must be to advertise to users of the forum.

[zwzsg]

I wonder if they are silently reading that thread to get info about the filters set against them.

[Anarchid]

I wonder if they are silently reading that thread to get info about the filters set against them.

Users browsing this forum: Anarchid and 1 guest

How do you tell if it's a smurf or a regular guest? You never know.

[PicassoCT]

I guess its easy to feel non-guilty. Just have to have some mouths to feed, and some lazy, playing first-worlders forum to spam.

Except that we are not lazy, the devs definatly aint playing much and my guess, is that the guy who does this, just wants a excuse to hang around at least for 10 mins a day on something interesting.

Which boils it down too.. do we have spring players from indonesia..

We might have pissed somebody off in the spam industry? Egg,Beacon and Spam Inc. comes to mind?

[FLOZi]

Or use the Moderate New Members feature. This allows you to validate new members before they are classified as registered members and are allowed to post. By reviewing the answers given in custom fields, you will be able to quickly determine if this new registration is a spammer.

This can however put some strain on moderators , or if a very dedicated human spammer goes through the trouble of filling all of that.

There are currently ~2 new users per day, so it is hardly a huge strain imo and would be the most effective route.

Just a shame it is done by email rather than via a page in the ACP.

[knorke]

Those are humans, they can come up with new ways to fool the filter rather easily...

Yes, excactly. Another example:

Posts a thread, notices it gets auto-censored. Post it again in a way that bypassing censorship.

What is the point of using the unicode characters to bypass the filter? I assumed that they spam forums to boost their relevance as seen by search engines. Search engines would not pick up on misspellings so their aim must be to advertise to users of the forum.

Search engines might be "clever" enough to figure out miss-spelled words.
Or at least the spammers think that search engines work that way.
I somehow doubt the purpose is advertising to users directly, the messages are too stupid and sometimes are just bunch of keywords.

I wonder if they are silently reading that thread to get info about the filters set against them.

Not sure, but I think it would not even be nessecary. It does not need any "inside-info" to come up with something like above. And any other plugin or other solution we might try, other forums have likely tried before us. So they have likely seen all possible obstacles beforehand anyway.

Either force people to respond to questions.

They are humans.
Spammers can answer questions like "What color is the sky? Answer:blue" just as well as normal users.
There would be the option to have spring-specifique questions but they must also be simple enough that new users know the answer, too.
I think no such question exists.
Even if such question existed: They could just spend very little time to figure out the answer, then store it in some database for future registrations.

Manually approving users:
-How do you know, before he posted, that he will not post spam?
-risks turning away valid users, if they have to wait.

[FLOZi]

Other option is a phpbb feature that basically would hide users 1st posts until mods had OK'd them => only mods & admins have to be bothered by spam, but we still have to clean it up.

[smoth]

Does that exist? If so cool

[FLOZi]

Does that exist? If so cool

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2189563

[smoth]

Anti spam mod is version 5 of phpbb

[malric]

I would like of course to have less spam, but if there is no automated solution (so, if an moderator is required), isn't any solution more or less what we have currently?

With an approval system for every new post we introduce the moderator "latency" into equation.

Is there something like "if post of new user is reported by x registered users, hide it until a moderator checks it" ? That would allow the moderators to check things at their own pace and would let the community help.

[FLOZi]

If anything atm reporting posts just makes our life harder as its just an extra task (delete report, ban ip, delete account)

AFAIK what you suggest is not available.

[Jools]

You don't want us to report these things?

[SinbadEV]

You don't want us to report these things?

No, he means it's more work for moderators to delete and ban than it would be for them to simply approve or deny new members.

[FLOZi]

No he's right, I'd rather people didn't report obvious spam threads. I may be alone in that view though, and I know it is nice to be able to do *something* when one is not a moderator.

[gajop]

No he's right, I'd rather people didn't report obvious spam threads. I may be alone in that view though, and I know it is nice to be able to do *something* when one is not a moderator.

No, you're not. Most of us probably browse forums on "view unread", obvious spam always gets deleted, closing report is just more tedious work. (Reporting non-obvious spam on the other hand is useful)