Signatures disabled & spamming

Post by **archibalduk** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 5:01 pm

This won't affect many of you since most users don't use the signature feature of our Forums. I've disabled signatures due to a recent spamming attack whereby 'spam bots' signed users up to the Forums. The way these bots work is that they surf through the internet looking for forums to sign up to. When the sign up, they set their signature and website as a web address of the site they're promoting. In the cases that have arisen on this site, they were both advertising casino websites.

No harm has been done and hopefully the TBL Admins will be able to stop any further spamming on the site. We have introduced a number of measures:

1) Signatures have been disabled.
2) The link to users' websites which is displayed when viewing threads will be removed. It will still be visible in user profiles and in the member list.
3) When joining the Forums, users must activate their accounts by e-mail.
4) Visual confirmation has been introduced. Visual confirmation is where you have to copy randomly generated letters. See the screenshot below.
5) The IP address from which a new user joins will be logged. Any users subsequently found to have been created by a spam bot shall have their IP address blocked.

An example of visual confirmation:

munky · Post by **munky** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 5:31 pm

Is there no end to the lengths companies will go to for advertising? This is nuts.

Good work straightening it all out.

Systemfel · Post by **Systemfel** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 5:53 pm

Actually, one of these bot-created users showed up at my favorite message board just a couple of weeks ago...

Good work!

Post by **E5150_ca** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:25 pm

Good work Archi.

What about setting up some sort of reward system for signatures? ie. X number of posts before you can have a sig, or X amount of time on boards... in other words... I want my sig back

Post by **archibalduk** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:38 pm

E5150_ca wrote:What about setting up some sort of reward system for signatures? ie. X number of posts before you can have a sig, or X amount of time on boards... in other words... I want my sig back

Hahaha

That's a good idea. It'll involve adding some scripting into the Forums but I'm pretty sure it can be done. I'll have a look for you over the weekend

So shall we set it so you need 1000 or 2000 posts before you get the sig?!

Post by **E5150_ca** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 9:24 pm

archibalduk wrote: So shall we set it so you need 1000 or 2000 posts before you get the sig?!

Despite all your anti-spam protections, I've already got this account made, I'll have noooo problem spamming

Post by **Minstrel** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 2:31 am

E5150_ca wrote:
archibalduk wrote: So shall we set it so you need 1000 or 2000 posts before you get the sig?!
Despite all your anti-spam protections, I've already got this account made, I'll have noooo problem spamming

And we'll have no problem deleting it and banning your ip

Post by **E5150_ca** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:18 am

Aww, come on now, its not THAT hard to find proxies.