PlaneShift

Fan Area => The Hydlaa Plaza => Topic started by: Idoru on March 09, 2007, 05:52:01 pm

Title: Forum spamming
Post by: Idoru on March 09, 2007, 05:52:01 pm
Im just curious, do any of the other guilds forums recieve spam members? The Elemental Lights guild forum has recieved 5 different spam-members in about the last week. Selling the usual junk, drugs, MP3s, cigarettes that kind of thing. But anyway, its a pain having to delete them. Anyone had similar problems?
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: miadon on March 09, 2007, 05:56:18 pm
yes I get lots of 0 posters signing on my supertux forums everyday, usally from dodgy domains, i then ban those dodgy email domains.
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: Earl_Listbard on March 09, 2007, 06:10:42 pm
I recall a survivor of vaern saying something like that as well... I think its coming from this thread: http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=19509.0


it does just scream, "look here for groups of people to advertise to!" ;)


-EL
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: Idoru on March 09, 2007, 06:54:57 pm
@Miadon, I think that I could probably ban *.ru and catch them all ;)

@EL Yeah, that would be quite a good place to get alot of forum addresses. I wonder if it is really worth the effort tbh, I dont think any of the forums would have enough members to make it a viable methed of advertising.

Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: Earl_Listbard on March 09, 2007, 07:00:14 pm
Well it seems that forums with a fair amount of members are the ones being targeted.. Then again maybe they just scroll through and pick them out randomly.


-EL
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: emeraldfool on March 09, 2007, 07:40:08 pm
Im just curious, do any of the other guilds forums recieve spam members? The Elemental Lights guild forum has recieved 5 different spam-members in about the last week. Selling the usual junk, drugs, MP3s, cigarettes that kind of thing. But anyway, its a pain having to delete them. Anyone had similar problems?

No porn? :P
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: Seytra on March 09, 2007, 07:53:12 pm
Well it seems that forums with a fair amount of members are the ones being targeted.. Then again maybe they just scroll through and pick them out randomly.
No, they are bots and don't look at the member counts at all. The guild forums aren't exactly high in members. Not by forum standards, anyway. The (obviously unmaintained) PSMC forum also has rather few members, none of which have posted anywhere near recently, yet it's swamped by spam (even though the only ones "reading" the spam are the other spambots, so they end up replying to each other).
Basically, they're programs that harvest forum addresses from the web (via HTML links), just like email spiders. Then the address list is fed into a spambot that knows how to register and navigate the forum software in question (possibly via plugins for easy extending). In the end, the only person forced to spend time on that are the forum mods / admins that must remove that junk, while the spammers collect the money.
However, the only reason why there still is money to be made with spam is because people keep following the links in it.
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: emeraldfool on March 09, 2007, 09:04:25 pm
I don't understand how spam-advertising could still be even remotely profitable in this day-and-age...

The only people who even bother reading past the first few horribly misspelled words are the people who're too stupid to buy anything online anyway...
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: Sangwa on March 10, 2007, 03:02:28 am
I don't understand how spam-advertising could still be even remotely profitable in this day-and-age...

The only people who even bother reading past the first few horribly misspelled words are the people who're too stupid to buy anything online anyway...

xD I love you now.

Good thing these dudes keep away from my forum. It's because I use charms.
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: Efflixi Aduro on March 10, 2007, 04:13:51 am
Theres no cost in sending out millions of spam...things, so anything you make is pure profit.
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: lordraleigh on March 10, 2007, 04:21:45 am
Theres no cost in sending out millions of spam...things, so anything you make is pure profit.

http://www.spamlaws.com/ (http://www.spamlaws.com/)

Enacted federal anti-spam law in US

http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/can-spam.shtm (http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/can-spam.shtm)

Summary of anti-spam State laws in US:

http://www.spamlaws.com/state/summary.shtml (http://www.spamlaws.com/state/summary.shtml)

Here some cases in US:

http://www.spamlaws.com/cases/index.shtml (http://www.spamlaws.com/cases/index.shtml)

Anti-spam Laws in European Union:

http://www.spamlaws.com/eu.shtm (http://www.spamlaws.com/eu.shtm)

Get these spammers to the court!
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: neko kyouran on March 10, 2007, 04:37:20 am
something as simple as requiring the user to click an activation code that is sent to them in an email removes the vast majority of spam bots from your forums. 

another idea is to setup a custom field in the register an account area that requests them to do something that a normal spam bot isn't going to be able to do.  as example for a ps based forum, show a picture of tria currency (circles, octas, etc), ask the user how much is there (monetary amount)
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: Kiirani on March 10, 2007, 07:40:53 am
something as simple as requiring the user to click an activation code that is sent to them in an email removes the vast majority of spam bots from your forums. 

another idea is to setup a custom field in the register an account area that requests them to do something that a normal spam bot isn't going to be able to do.  as example for a ps based forum, show a picture of tria currency (circles, octas, etc), ask the user how much is there (monetary amount)

The Explorers Guild forum does something similar, except it renders a picture of trias, gives a textual description and asks the user to name what they are (trias). Or did last I registered.
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: Idoru on March 10, 2007, 10:53:53 am
hmmm, thats the problem. We use phpBB, it requires the user to enter the code from those silly distorted charactes before they can register. It also requires email verification aswell. The members who registered did manage to register but didnt post spam, just had it in their email address, website and their name. Either OCR has got more advanced or there is something im missing.
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: emeraldfool on March 10, 2007, 01:54:56 pm
I don't understand how spam-advertising could still be even remotely profitable in this day-and-age...

The only people who even bother reading past the first few horribly misspelled words are the people who're too stupid to buy anything online anyway...

xD I love you now.

Psch, when was the last time you heard of someone buying \/1@G®@ over the internet?
They'd probably get 1 more sale a year from that spam... and it would be from a disgruntled hacker who's stolen someone's pay-pal account out of spite.

Theres no cost in sending out millions of spam...things, so anything you make is pure profit.

Spam-bots/programs/viruses/etc. are getting more and more complex to combat the rise in anti-spam software and devices. The need for evil genius code-writers is getting bigger, and thusly the cost of purchasing the code for spam viruses is getting higher.

I think. I haven't really any idea what I'm talking about, but it seems logical :P
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: Idoru on March 10, 2007, 06:15:04 pm
Quote
Psch, when was the last time you heard of someone buying \/1@G®@ over the internet?
They'd probably get 1 more sale a year from that spam... and it would be from a disgruntled hacker who's stolen someone's pay-pal account out of spite.

If that is true,

Quote
The need for evil genius code-writers is getting bigger, and thusly the cost of purchasing the code for spam viruses is getting higher.

I think. I haven't really any idea what I'm talking about, but it seems logical


then how can that possibly be economical? Doesnt seem particularly logical to me.
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: emeraldfool on March 11, 2007, 12:50:18 am

If that is true, then how can that possibly be economical? Doesnt seem particularly logical to me.


It isn't. Thus:

I don't understand how spam-advertising could still be even remotely profitable in this day-and-age...
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: lordraleigh on March 11, 2007, 04:29:11 am
I hate SPAM!  :@#\

(http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/images/b/b0/Tripspam.jpg)

(http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/images/d/da/Stop_spamming_you_nub.JPG)
Title: Re: Forum spamming
Post by: Peacer on March 14, 2007, 03:30:11 am
yep, if guests are able to post you'll get stupid bots posting advertisements of viagras, if you don't they'll register a member instead and hopw you're retarded enough to give them posting rights... so much for advertisements