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View Full Version : Help with getting rid of spam bots.



Mystic Muse
2010-10-20, 09:25 PM
Well, I've been given the duty of keeping away spammers on a website. However, I don't have any of prior experience with doing this and would like some help. Signatures and websites are enough when they're there but sometimes they aren't. Here's the other information I can get from an account.

1. IP
2. Hostname
3. Date activated and last active
4. Email
5. current status
6. Whether the account has been activated or not.
7. Name of the account.

Any guidelines anybody can give me for whether something is a spammer or not?

PopcornMage
2010-10-20, 09:39 PM
Captcha's?

They are a frequently used tool to deter some spammers.

There are filters for post content as well.

Mystic Muse
2010-10-20, 09:42 PM
I'm not allowed to change the forum software. I'm just supposed to delete the accounts of spammers when they pop up. I could change the forum software but I have the feeling that wouldn't end well as I'd be banned from the forum and the store the forum is based on (MY FLGS) would probably not allow me to go there anymore.

So, no changing the forum software.

PopcornMage
2010-10-20, 09:52 PM
What forum software, pray tell?

Some of them have different options, and actually, you might well want to try their support forums.

Mystic Muse
2010-10-20, 10:59 PM
I think Simple machines. That's what it says at the top anyway.

Regardless of whether I could change it, I'm not allowed to.

PopcornMage
2010-10-20, 11:12 PM
Ok, well, there's some modifications here (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?action=search;type=19).

Looks like they have a blacklist, which helps filter some of the problems out.

At the least, I'd ask at their forums so you'd get people who know the software.

Mystic Muse
2010-10-20, 11:22 PM
Yeah, that's it.

Are there any guidelines that help identify if an account is a spam account or not? Because those could really help.

PopcornMage
2010-10-20, 11:25 PM
Well, if they have a URL in their name, if they have a lot of numbers, if the name is randomized, then you may have an issue. Always posting at the same time of day, or the same time of the hour is a possibility. The same URL in every post is another clue.

There are filters that recognize text as spammish, but I don't know if that forum software has them.

Mystic Muse
2010-10-21, 12:28 AM
How about hostnames that are the same as their IP or don't show up?

And when I say the same, I mean exactly the same. No differences whatsoever.

PopcornMage
2010-10-21, 01:35 AM
I wouldn't rely on that, that kind of traffic can be blocked for unrelated reasons.

factotum
2010-10-21, 01:45 AM
Unfortunately this is still a largely manual process, because spam changes all the time. A trick I've noticed on the forum I moderate in the last year, for instance, is for a spammer to post in a busy thread with an identical copy of an earlier post (so it doesn't look out of place) with some dodgy links in the signature. They'll also post random messages to a board to "test the water"--if the account they do that with doesn't get banned they know to go for the hard stuff!

Mystic Muse
2010-10-23, 04:33 PM
I've checked on google and couldn't find it but I want to be sure. If an email address says "Yahoo.co.uk" is that valid or not?

KuReshtin
2010-10-23, 05:13 PM
Yes, yahoo.co.uk could very well be a valid email address.

Gullara
2010-10-23, 05:24 PM
Couldn't any web address be part of a valid email address?

factotum
2010-10-24, 05:44 AM
Couldn't any web address be part of a valid email address?

No. What determines if an E-mail address is valid would be if there is an associated DNS MX record for the domain in question, which is entirely up to whoever registered the domain to create! You can check that using the NSLOOKUP command in Windows, amongst other ways.