Spam Issues

**Starscream** · 05-09-2010, 01:31 AM **#11**

(05-08-2010, 06:07 PM)omegadox Wrote: Everyone is lazy here.

**Xtreme2damax** · 05-10-2010, 11:58 PM **#12**

I thought I would just poke at this again and hope an admin takes notice, these type of "How to convert DRM protected music and movies to MP4/AVI/MOV/MP3/WMV/AAC" thread are popping up more often by spammers as I linked in my first post. Every day I see a few new threads of these types usually by different spammers/bots albeit likely from the same source.

**Xtreme2damax** · 05-14-2010, 02:31 PM **#13**

Ahem, I'm still seeing these spam threads constantly popping up so I thought I would give this thread a poke back to the top so an admin will possibly take notice..

Wth is ector anyway, haven't seen him around in a while and haven't heard back from him yet.

blakegriplingph · 05-14-2010, 06:32 PM **#14**

(05-10-2010, 11:58 PM)Xtreme2damax Wrote: I thought I would just poke at this again and hope an admin takes notice, these type of "How to convert DRM protected music and movies to MP4/AVI/MOV/MP3/WMV/AAC" thread are popping up more often by spammers as I linked in my first post. Every day I see a few new threads of these types usually by different spammers/bots albeit likely from the same source.

They're mostly from China and elsewhere, looking for a cheap way to advertise their crappy converter apps that only turn MPEGs to garbage. Heck, there's always AutoGK and all them open source suites that do the job better for free.

Adding admin confirmation can be the ultimate solution to spam, at the cost of less users joining in due to wait times. What I did in my forum, though, was to add a security question that only legit users can answer.

**KHRZ** · 05-14-2010, 09:33 PM **#15**

I'm having this problem heavily on youtube these times, uploaded the SMG2 trailer last E3 and apparantly the spammers search out every popular video with the word "trailer" in it, and posting links to "watch free videos" sites. I think I wouldn't have been so annoyed if the trailer was actually for a movie...

**Jack Frost** · 05-15-2010, 12:11 AM **#16**

I just checked one of the available MyBB Demos, it seems to be possible to add a new (and hidden) Profile fields that are required during registering. Most of the bots I banned up until now didn't have anything in their profiles, just the bare minimum.
Maybe adding a new Textfield, required, hidden, saying stuff like "Type Dolphin here" could help. *pokes random Admins*

**Xtreme2damax** · 05-15-2010, 02:59 AM **#17**

(05-15-2010, 12:11 AM)Jack Frost Wrote: I just checked one of the available MyBB Demos, it seems to be possible to add a new (and hidden) Profile fields that are required during registering. Most of the bots I banned up until now didn't have anything in their profiles, just the bare minimum.
Maybe adding a new Textfield, required, hidden, saying stuff like "Type Dolphin here" could help. *pokes random Admins*

That might also work, I did post some good suggestions above but adding plugins to deter the spamming issue would have to be done by an admin with FTP access whilst custom profile fields could be added by anyone with just ACP access.

blakegriplingph Wrote:They're mostly from China and elsewhere, looking for a cheap way to advertise their crappy converter apps that only turn MPEGs to garbage. Heck, there's always AutoGK and all them open source suites that do the job better for free.

Yeah lol, it seems to be one of the prime sources for spam although in all likelihood the spammers could be using a proxy in China and actually be located elsewhere

blakegriplingph Wrote:Adding admin confirmation can be the ultimate solution to spam, at the cost of less users joining in due to wait times. What I did in my forum, though, was to add a security question that only legit users can answer.

Admin verification is limited and also time consuming. There are also spammers that haven't been added to various anti-spam blacklists yet so in the end there will still be some spammers that get through either way. The suggestions I mentioned are the least annoying for new members, after registration members can post immediately to receive help instead of waiting around for an admin to approve their account. Admin verification may sound good, but in the end these users might leave and go elsewhere to receive immediate help for their problem.

**Jack Frost** · 05-15-2010, 08:10 PM **#18**

Thread approval might be a way too, but that wont stop PM-spam (I've seen that on other forums already).
The least intrusive one is probably the custom field, altho I'd prefer it like phpBB does (where you can also define a list of values that must be entered). With how MyBB does it, the best way is probably "Type GC or Wii here" and limit the input to a max length of 3. If any bot tries to fill it with random stuff, it probably exceeds that length.

blakegriplingph · 05-15-2010, 08:39 PM **#19**

(05-15-2010, 08:10 PM)Jack Frost Wrote: Thread approval might be a way too, but that wont stop PM-spam (I've seen that on other forums already).
The least intrusive one is probably the custom field, altho I'd prefer it like phpBB does (where you can also define a list of values that must be entered). With how MyBB does it, the best way is probably "Type GC or Wii here" and limit the input to a max length of 3. If any bot tries to fill it with random stuff, it probably exceeds that length.

Or a question-answer type security question, like ask the user "What does Dolphin emulate?" or something like that.

**KHRZ** · 05-17-2010, 02:28 AM **#20**

In gamefaqs, new users are limited to 1 topic and 10 posts in a day, etc. most bots here only make 2-3 topics and no additional posts so that wouldn't be so very effective, but what about these security questions, and having them only appear the first day/first 3 topics you make after joining the forum?