Data Sphere

Howdy, fellow residents of the 'Sphere!

Some of you may have noticed an uptick in spammer activity lately. The Data-Sphere team apologizes for the inconvenience and overall annoyance of these. We're working on improving our anti-spam measures and have increased our administrative capacity to counteract this.

Please pardon the dust and we'll try to make sure that the 'Sphere remains clean of spamming for you and yours.

First time I see one around this time in the day, normally they appear hours later. But it was the "same" content as always.
Have you considered some kind of text classifier?

Zerg rush!!! Kekekekekeke!!! If at least they included some battle reports of massive lists of hungries...

Oh jeez. Working on this particular incursion. Apologies as I've been on the road most of the day.

You should put a restriction that the first 2 posts of a new member need to be approved by an admin before they are visible.
That is how we fixed the problem on our local forum.

That still means moderators have to clean up... but if not public, maybe spammers will give up. Worth trying. Probably something from this https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2045595 (one of the things depends on "Newly Registered Users Group" which appeared in 3.0.6 as mentioned in https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... #p12961708 )

Some days I wonder if this spamming in reality is a way of communicating something ("wait for the messages with 8 lines"). Or a way to force everyone to pay for extra services (what nice windows you got, looks like expensive glass...). Because otherwise it's pretty stupid spam (short lived, no direct links or even copy/paste ones as ,CＯＭ is not .COM, wrong language...).

Well... I've enacted... something...

We'll see how effective it is or if I even really did anything at all.

Seems that whatever you did, is in effect.
Let's see how that'll work.

What was changed? Because it's not working.

I tried forcing admin approval of "newly registered users", but wasn't sure if I got that quite right.

I suppose I hadn't, though.

No, but there are new user's posts that require approval.

Which cut the number of topics our Korean bots post pretty drastically. Instead of fifty, they now post two or three, notice these do not show up, and stop.
A little longer, and they may give up completely. Assuming there are human beings behind that...

Oh! So that's what the approval was for.

Well, at least it did something.

Well, yes, that is the idea, that posts from new accounts are reviewed before being readable by everyone, not that you enable all new accounts by hand. Then as the clearly spammish posts are not openly visible ever, spammers should give up, unless their target is being a load on admins (automatic text classifier would help with that, making it mostly a wasted electricity issue). Just make sure you nuke old accounts if they spam, those are not filtered.

It seems to be holding so far. Can we party now?

Yep you can party. I'll keep a broom ready, in case any bot sneakes by.

We still get an occasional "kitchen" bot, but the Korean ones are apparently gone.

If you are moderating first posts from new accounts, why would the kitcheners pass?

Just letting you know I won't have the will/energy to do mod duties properly for the next month or so, for personal grief reasons.

Pierzasty, worry not! We'll try to pick up the slack to give you all the time you need! Sorry to hear that something is ailing you! Best wishes and know that you have friends here!


I'm glad we finally got something to work. I added an extra registration question, just in case that would be at fault.

Thanks.

Mob of Blondes wrote:If you are moderating first posts from new accounts, why would the kitcheners pass?

He probably means that the Koreans gave up while kitchenbots still generate accounts and posts (that don't pass mod approval).

Whatever was changed, failed. Korean spam sneaked in.

Pierzasty wrote:Just letting you know I won't have the will/energy to do mod duties properly for the next month or so, for personal grief reasons.

Take your time.

What about using some kind of the puzzle-like captcha plugin for newcomers?
Wysłane strzałą na twoje drzewo

Several common capchas have been cracked by bot spammers, anyway.

I'll try tweaking a setting.

Even visual - mouse only ones? Then the humans are spamming directly. :/
Wysłane strzałą na twoje drzewo

That seems to be the case, yes.

If so...

Let's use 3rd party anti-spam service, such as CleanTalk:
https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/ ... m_protect/

Even if so, I'll keep sweepin' them out untill they get bored

Thank you for your service, Errhile! Makes my day a lot less stressful.

Shivon wrote:Let's use 3rd party anti-spam service, such as CleanTalk:
https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/ ... m_protect/

Or Sblam. Best would be local, less dependencies.

Does the forum provide a RSS feed? I think it could work as bridge to common filters.

Mob of Blondes wrote:Or Sblam. Best would be local, less dependencies.

Yeah, but Sblam requires tinkering with critical phpbb scripts - one error and whole forum is down, unless administration is skilled enough to do so

Administration? Skilled?