Private message spam

weshowe · Post by **weshowe** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:02 am

Anyone that hasn't had to deal with the administration end of a website has no idea how many automated attempts are made to post a link somehow on websites. Bots try to create accounts continually. Machines try to make guest postings even though the forums are closed to posting by guests.
Attempts are made to inject SQL to infect all the pages in the website database. Bots that target Sites like Wordpress that allow feedback. The objective is to get a link published on the site for long enough a period of time that Google catalogs the link, raising the rating for the referenced site.
On and on it goes, and the only relief is to deny access by IP. This is tedious, but effective (although the same schemes show up later coming from new addresses). Since a lot of these are bots running on computers that their owners do not know are infected, eventually you will cut off legitimate users... but if they are surfing without protection, they need cut off until they get their infection cured.
Not to mention the harvesters that chase through the user database looking for email addresses and urls of new sites to try to spam on.
And then some users take the time to make legitimate accounts, and then post spam messages in threads trying to get the same results, higher ratings for a different site. I'm no modertaor here, but I would show no mercy... if the message has links to off-topic sites that do not relate to the topic at hand, I would (and do on my sites) delete the user, all his postings and ban his username, email and IP from my site.

volca · Post by **volca** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 12:16 pm

The problem with IP bans is that most providers provide dhcp, and do not guarantee that your IP won't change over time (a way to pull more money from customers - per month static ip reservation payments).
Thus, the blocked IP will migrate from user to user, and there is no way around this, probably.
Otherwise, I agree - the amount of work admins/moderators need to do these days just to have a clean forum is out of the reasonable by a huge degree.

Edit: Oh, and:
1. if this all is about SOA, what about the possibility to only show links in posts if the user is logged in? Wouldn't this stop the spammer from doing SOA on your site (they'd still do it, but without any effect)
2. First N posts from any user should be admin/moderator reviewed
3. if user would try posting more than 2 messages of the same text, he would get ban and messages deleted automatically
4. Sending more than one message in the period of reviews (2) would lead to automatic ban (with user warning - your first message is being reviewed, do not try posting another message or you'll get a ban)

enligor · Post by **enligor** » Mon Nov 10, 2008 2:06 pm

One way, which is often used on frequently visited forums (think like entertainment websites), which are target by bots more than anything (due to a large userbase and a higher chance to be reindexed by Google sooner, sometimes within 24 hours) is dead simple - turn off hyperlinks at those sections of the forum, where they are not crutial to the forum's wellbeing. That provides a surprisingly high level of success. In case of Ogre, that could be the Off-topic forum.

eber · Post by **eber** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 9:05 am

stuv203
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 455#314455

johnhpus · Post by **johnhpus** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 4:15 am

cshaobu333098

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 744#314744

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... highlight=

reptor · Post by **reptor** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 7:36 am

The spammers really start to get on my nerves

I use "View posts since last visit" and a lot of the new posts are spam. I will never ever buy anything from the spammers so make sure to understand this: you failed. I am not giving you any money. Get the hell out of here, you are not welcome. In fact I wish you burn in hell, if there is one.

lonewolff · Post by **lonewolff** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:29 am

llh11456

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 762#314762

Post by **xavier** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:34 am

reptor wrote:The spammers really start to get on my nerves

I use "View posts since last visit" and a lot of the new posts are spam. I will never ever buy anything from the spammers so make sure to understand this: you failed. I am not giving you any money. Get the hell out of here, you are not welcome. In fact I wish you burn in hell, if there is one.

It's not to get you to buy something. It's to try to blast their links onto as many high-traffic sites as possible (before they get eradicated) in the hope that the Google crawler will stop by and elevate the Google search ratings of the links in their posts. It's gaming the Google search system, in other words, in a distributed sort of way.

Post by **xavier** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:35 am

lonewolff wrote:llh11456

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 762#314762

Don't bother posting replies to these sorts of posts -- it's just more posts we have to kill, and the poster to which you are replying, isn't reading the posts.

lonewolff · Post by **lonewolff** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 11:34 am

Can we have a moderator delete these spam posts?
What this guy has just done is +1 to his SEO ranking with google & yahoo.

Post by **xavier** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 6:48 pm

I didn't see any in the thread you linked, so one must have done so already. It's not instant-response here, you know.

reptor · Post by **reptor** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:12 pm

Maybe it would be worth it to investigate options for improving the login system against automated logins. I wouldn't mind it if I had to give a third input in addition to username and password to login if that would significantly reduce the amount of spam posts.

Post by **betajaen** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:27 pm

Why not ask a question related to Ogre?

For example:
What is the main singleton class called? Answer: Root.

It would cut down spam to near zero, and force anyone new to read the documentation before they can post.

reptor · Post by **reptor** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 9:04 pm

I had that sort of thing in mind as well.

But I didn't write it here because I was thinking it could possibly be unfair to new Ogre3D users. A newbie could struggle to find the answer even for that sort of question.

Would it then also be a "if you don't pass this then you shouldn't be trying to use the Ogre3D programming library at all" test

Post by **betajaen** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 9:12 pm

Well it could encourage first-time posters to consult the documentation/wiki for commonly answered questions.

Post by **spacegaier** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 9:13 pm

I support the idea of asking the new user such a question and with an reference to the OGRE wiki tutorial 1, where they should find the answer if they don't know it already.
So it should not be a problem for new users to register.

I also guess that most users keen on registrating here, have a problem related to OGRE and therefore probably have coded a bit with OGRE already (or had a glance at the tutorials), so a very low number of new users should need to look in the tutorials just for registrating
--> no reason why we should noit build this bot barrier in.

Post by **Kojack** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 1:55 am

Not everybody here is a programmer. I don't think it would be fare to expect an artist who has zero coding experience but wants to ask a question about an ogre exporter to look up answers to coding questions in tutorials.

Post by **spacegaier** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 12:34 pm

Okay Kojack, that's right.

But we could ask something more general like "Who is the founder of OGRE?" and link to the OGRE team page on ogre3d.org or to the OGRE history page on the wiki, so it should not be difficult for anyone willed to registrate here.

Post by **jacmoe** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 3:23 pm

As long as we're using PhpBB2, which is more or less open to attacks, we just have to deal with it.

lonewolff · Post by **lonewolff** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 9:29 pm

This is true. It is a hard one to combat.

People are pretty quick to report spammers (in this thread). So, whilst we cant stamp it out entirely, the spammer isnt around for very long

Post by **spacegaier** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:57 am

stuv392 is spamming! Giorgio BRAND NAME advertising

ppClarity · Post by **ppClarity** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 3:38 pm

The OgreOggSound Addon forum has Guest posting enabled.

enligor · Post by **enligor** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:52 pm

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45913

selling his cloths/fashion stuff again xD

some more funny SEO postings...
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2addons/viewtopic.php?t=8677

xadhoom · Post by **xadhoom** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 9:48 am

dvdcupgo339

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45757
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=40122
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=30182
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=40453

volca · Post by **volca** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 9:11 am

sztin104

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=46023
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=44925