mxvladi
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2517
Registered: 02-11-2008
IP: Logged

Spammer again. Amazing, now it has ads in post instead of sig!

jbluestein
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1670
Registered: 12-23-2005
IP: Logged

And again.

____________________________
"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

jbluestein
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1670
Registered: 12-23-2005
IP: Logged

I'm guessing that this is another thinly-disguised spam.

____________________________
"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
IP: Logged

Generic post, ads in sig.

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Tim
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1979
Registered: 08-07-2004
IP: Logged

Another spammer.

____________________________
The best way to lose customers is to let little kids running loose on a forum with too many mod points.

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5542
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

These people are so incredibly annoying. I think we need a custom DROD captcha. Ideas? Match images of in-game objects with their names? Show a 10x10 swatch of a room and count the <object> in it?

jbluestein
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1670
Registered: 12-23-2005
IP: Logged

Schik wrote:
These people are so incredibly annoying. I think we need a custom DROD captcha. Ideas? Match images of in-game objects with their names? Show a 10x10 swatch of a room and count the <object> in it?

I think we should make anyone posting a URL answer a captcha that can only be solved by defeating a randomly-generated DROD room.

____________________________
"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

12th Archivist
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 789
Registered: 12-07-2008
IP: Logged

I like both of your ideas, but I think Schik's would be the best compromise of security and easy membership for people who genuinely want to join the forum to be a part of the community.

Yeah, I'm all for naming the various elements (excluding typical floor) in a randomly-generated 10x10 patch of room.

____________________________
It was going well until it exploded.
~Scott Manley

Check out the DROD Wikia project here!

Tim
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1979
Registered: 08-07-2004
IP: Logged

I'm wondering, what if they are real people that do the spamming?

In that case, no amount of captchas will help.

I don't mind helping out with removal of those people and posts, besides, I'm too often on the forum anyway.

What also might help is disabling links made by anyone with less than 12 rank points. (not difficult to get).

____________________________
The best way to lose customers is to let little kids running loose on a forum with too many mod points.

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5542
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

If it's real people, it's probably just a captcha farm. These people are trained on individual implementations of captcha.... thus it's problematic that we're using the most-used captcha out there. The spammers have bots finding forums that use captchas they can either crack or farm out.

Thus, switching to a custom one might mean we don't even show up on the spammers' radar, or if it gets passed through to the farm, they won't have a clue what to do. These farms charge as little as $2/1000 captchas solved, it wouldn't make sense for them to spend the time figuring out how to solve a custom captcha for some tiny little site like us.

Anyways, I have considered not allowing links for users with less than X rank points. It's probably easier, and less likely to annoy actual people who want to talk about DROD (or Wonderquest, or Crystal Shard games).

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
IP: Logged

From what I understand, SOP for spammers who can't post links is to post the links and salt them with random spaces, or something like that. e.g.: ht.tp://caravelg ames.com/

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5542
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Well, I have two main goals in stopping spam here:
1. It's annoying to have to remove the posts, ban/delete users, etc.
2. I don't want their spam to be successful - i.e. I don't want our people to visit the site they're linking to.

If they put spacers or whatever in their links, so that they can't be clicked on... I'm not worried about #2. I doubt that people here are going to go to any trouble to visit what's fairly obvious spam, while they could accidentally click on or be tricked into clicking on an actual spam link.

As for #1 - if it's an actual person registering and manually posting, there's not much I can do. It seems unlikely, I'd think that would be way too costly - you couldn't get nearly enough forums spammed per $ if it's all manual. So if it's a spambot with humans simply doing the captchas, the bot would have to understand what we tell the user when they try to post a link and automatically put spacers in it to trick us.

I don't know. Maybe I'm totally underestimating them. I should probably just try it and see what happens.

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
IP: Logged

You think #1 defies automation? Have you never received an email offering FREE c1@l.is & v i a g r a?

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5542
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

I'm not sure I get what your point is. I just looked through my junk mails, and sure, there are some offers for viagra or cialis. I didn't do exhaustive research, but the 3 or 4 I opened all had working web links they wanted me to click on, if I wanted to buy those things.

We're discussing 2 ways to combat this:
1. Make it harder for them to automate registering
2. Make it harder to post a working link

If they can't register, yay! If they can't post working links, yay! If they post "FREE c1@l.is & v i a g r a" and it's not a link to anything, then sure, I get annoyed because I have to baleet them, but their advertising didn't work.

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
IP: Logged

The point was that there is no reason #1 requires an actual person.

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Briareos
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3517
Registered: 08-07-2005
IP: Logged

*ick*

Oh wait, there's more...

+∞ on the minimum rank point thing from me...

np: Caribou - Cherrybomb (Up In Flames (Disc 2))

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

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[Last edited by Briareos at 08-15-2010 12:10 PM]

Odyssey
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 127
Registered: 09-09-2009
IP: Logged

Perhaps the inactivity of the forum is attracting spammers? Noticed that some forums I've been on start getting spammed if their PPD drops below 20. Not sure what the PPD of Caravel Forum is.


____________________________
55th Skywatcher

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[Last edited by Odyssey at 08-15-2010 09:23 PM]

12th Archivist
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 789
Registered: 12-07-2008
IP: Logged

mxvladi wrote:
Is it just me, or This and This are the same person? (I mainly think so because odyssey did double account once, but I could be wrong)

The speech patterns are quite different, although that could be part of an impressive disguise. Besides, how would pretending to be burgerboy99 benefit Odyssey in any way?

Eh, I might be getting a bit too serious about this. Let's just see what Schik thinks about it.

____________________________
It was going well until it exploded.
~Scott Manley

Check out the DROD Wikia project here!

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1510
Registered: 03-31-2005
IP: Logged

Okay... something must have been funny with the burgerboy, since he is now disabled, but how did you know that, mxvladi?

hyperme
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1656
Registered: 06-23-2006
IP: Logged

This guy is posting in all caps with unrelated stuff. And has an advert sig.

____________________________
[Insert witty comment here]
Qzvlkx?

12th Archivist
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 789
Registered: 12-07-2008
IP: Logged

hyperme wrote:
This guy is posting in all caps with unrelated stuff. And has an advert sig.

Either this guy made another post or this is the post you were referring to. In either case, can a moderator or administrator remove the post please?

____________________________
It was going well until it exploded.
~Scott Manley

Check out the DROD Wikia project here!

CuriousShyRabbit
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3171
Registered: 10-14-2006
IP: Logged

Sneaky new forum member has edited posts to include advertising links.

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5542
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

CuriousShyRabbit wrote:
Sneaky new forum member has edited posts to include advertising links.

Thanks, fixed. The new code to disallow posting links with < 12 rank points is darn near ready to roll out.

12th Archivist
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 789
Registered: 12-07-2008
IP: Logged

Schik wrote:
Thanks, fixed. The new code to disallow posting links with < 12 rank points is darn near ready to roll out.

I can tell by TuttleTest murkin' around the forum.

I think I'm really going to enjoy the system! You deserve one of these! Oh, and a modpoint too.

____________________________
It was going well until it exploded.
~Scott Manley

Check out the DROD Wikia project here!

Elfstone
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1285
Registered: 03-01-2006
IP: Logged

ummm . . is the bit at the bottom of THIS page allowed? It seems like advertising and we don't allow that do we? If it is ok then I apologise.

____________________________
Winner of: Novice Architect Excellence 2006.
FAPCA - Technical Design Excellence in Layout and Aesthetics

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5542
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Elfstone wrote:
ummm . . is the bit at the bottom of THIS page allowed? It seems like advertising and we don't allow that do we? If it is ok then I apologise.

Absolutely not. Thanks, fixed.

CuriousShyRabbit
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3171
Registered: 10-14-2006
IP: Logged

Here's another spammer.

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
IP: Logged

Heh. What kind of spammer is dumb enough to admit Chinese origin?

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Tuttle
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1612
Registered: 02-22-2003
IP: Logged

And another one: http://forum.caravelgames.com/member.php?Action=viewprofile&username=wuchun

(Googling for the homepage URL should remove any doubt about the purpose of the registration here.)

NoahT
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1229
Registered: 06-17-2003
IP: Logged

This definitely looks like spam.

-Noah

____________________________
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

My stuff: