Anyone want to be the new user mod.

[Ben E Lou]

I just realized I haven't done it since last Sunday (~10 days ago).


Users to Moderate 1,044




So, uh, yeah. Get ready for some spam. No way I'm going through that many. I'm just gonna let 'em through.

[Subby]

Don't worry, dangarion will report them!

[heybrad]

Dude... I was just checking out juegos para el mover.

[Lathum]

I predict this will not end well.

[heybrad]

There's some good stuff in these threads...

t's such a tickety-boo site.

[Buccaneer]

Wouldn't most (majority, all) of them be bogus?

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by heybrad

There's some good stuff in these threads...

t's such a tickety-boo site.

That could be the new FOFC meme.

[cuervo72]

WHERE DO I GET MY BADGE?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Wouldn't most (majority, all) of them be bogus?

Yes.

The problem is that there are some legit ones in there, and the spammers are getting smarter. Up until 2-3 months ago, spam accounts were typically one of three varieties:

VARIETY ONE: The Obvious Porn Spam
TYPICAL USERNAME: HotSlutTina
TYPICAL EMAIL ADDRESS: [email protected]


VARIETY TWO: The Obvious Pharmaceutical Spam
TYPICAL USERNAME: LarryJackson
TYPICAL EMAIL ADDRESS: [email protected]

VARIETY THREE: The Competely Nonsensical Account That No Human In His Right Mind (Except Maybe That "LOOOOOOOOOOOVE IT!!!!" Guy) Would Create

TYPICAL USERNAME: aRafdUasD
TYPICAL EMAIL ADDRESS: [email protected]




But lately, I'm getting a ton of new registrations that look like this:


USERNAME: JimmySmith74
PASSWORD: [email protected]


Now, the tip-off for these is that often there's a JimmySmith75, JimmySmith76, and JimmySmith77 account registered also, but not always. There are wayyyy too many of these to make me believe for one second that they're real, but it's also much more difficult to divide the wheat from the chaff now.

[MizzouRah]

I'm going to email that Tina chick, thanks.

[Coffee Warlord]

I'll be finding out real soon where to get bigger boobs!

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

I'm guessing we need an upgrade to use captcha during registration?

[3ric]

How about getting some add-on that forces the user-to-be to identify a picture or something before registering?

[Buccaneer]

Ben, I do not envy you.

[Greyroofoo]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

WHERE DO I GET MY BADGE?

We don't need no stinkin' badges!

[stevew]

how about this Ben?

New users get access to one specific forum/user group and restrictions on PM's, etc.

I think you can just auto upgrade them into a full on user group from there, and periodically delete all the non upgraded users.

In RWBL, we have new registers, who can post in one forum and can't PM. Then we have "league owners" who can do everything.

[Subby]

Captcha definitely the way to go.

[Coffee Warlord]

Captcha isn't all that. Many, many bots can get through pretty sophisticated captcha versions.

[RendeR]

I understand completely Ben. My Gaming groups website gets the same spam registrations over and over again, though not in the volume you seem to.

One thing I've noticed is that all teh spammers put the same name in for both the USERID and the Real Name. So I simply scan through the list and uncheck anything that has a different name between those and delete the rest.

takes about 10 minutes.

[Ben E Lou]

Yeah, the problem is that we're evidently getting ~100 per day now. I just checked, and six new ones have come in the ~1 hour since I moderated them. All of those look like spam, so I got rid of them.

I have some limitations as to what I can and can't do, but I'll look into some add-ons.

[Coffee Warlord]

Jesus. The board I administer, which has like NO usage, had a good 500 bots register in the past two weeks.

[SteveMax58]

Originally Posted by somebody awesome

I craving you multifarious visitors.

[heybrad]

The bots are starting to rise up.

[Coffee Warlord]

Just give everyone mod powers, so we can delete the spam threads!

I'm *sure* it won't be horribly, horribly abused. Absolutely positive.

[LloydLungs]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Jesus. The board I administer, which has like NO usage, had a good 500 bots register in the past two weeks.

Yeah, I moderate a much smaller board than this, and maybe it's not quite that many but it's a lot. Ben did a nice job illustrating the different types of spam names, though my board is also getting TONS of random Russian names. I pretty much hate Russia at this point. This must be what the 80s felt like.

[Coffee Warlord]

I actually wound up banning any .ru and .cc email addys, which helped for awhile. Not so much these days.

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by LloydLungs

Yeah, I moderate a much smaller board than this, and maybe it's not quite that many but it's a lot. Ben did a nice job illustrating the different types of spam names, though my board is also getting TONS of random Russian names. I pretty much hate Russia at this point. This must be what the 80s felt like.

Hopefully we let the Russian guy through with all the gold and tiny giraffe.

[Ben E Lou]

OK. I found a mod that I have installed that might help. We'll see.

[DanGarion]

I have found a pretty good vB plugin that helps with register spam...

[Ben E Lou]

Which one is that? (Has to be for 3.6.0)

[DanGarion]

vbStopForumSpam - vBulletin.org Forum

Is what I use, it's a bit different from what I've used in the past with other message boards, but I only see about 1-2 spambots a month on the two sites I still run boards on.

Other than that, I'm willing to help out in any way possible Ben.

And it works on 3.6 according to the link, you might just have to find the 3.6 version (haven't used the older versions).

[Passacaglia]

Aren't there like 10 mods already? Why not get them to do it, instead of bringing in a new mod?

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Aren't there like 10 mods already? Why not get them to do it, instead of bringing in a new mod?

There are only 7, but 2 of them haven't been active for at least the past 2 months...

[Ben E Lou]

OK, the "mod" thing was a joke.

[Subby]

OH REALLLL PROFESSIONAL MAKING JOKES AT A TIME LIKE THIS!

ASSHOLE DICTATOR!

[Marc Vaughan]

With regards to new users - if you don't have time to spot them how about letting them through but having their posts 'moderated' initially, that is their posts are invisible until they've had their first post approved by a moderator.

That way if their first post is 'Buy your viagra here' no one gets annoyed by it apart from the poor mod who has to delete the account.

(I'm pretty certain this facility is built into vBulletin.... )

[Matthean]

Originally Posted by LloydLungs

Yeah, I moderate a much smaller board than this, and maybe it's not quite that many but it's a lot. Ben did a nice job illustrating the different types of spam names, though my board is also getting TONS of random Russian names. I pretty much hate Russia at this point. This must be what the 80s felt like.

In Russia, spam mods you.

[MizzouRah]

what mod better for ootp?

[Radii]

there's a "photo captcha" addon for phpbb that stopped spam registrations completely for me. You have a set of ~20 images that you store, 10 of cats, 10 of cars. When a user registers he sees a few of these images and has to choose "cat or car" for each one. Have not had a single spam registration in over year, down from 25+ a day.

Is there something similar available for vbulletin?

[Mac Howard]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Yeah, the problem is that we're evidently getting ~100 per day now. I just checked, and six new ones have come in the ~1 hour since I moderated them. All of those look like spam, so I got rid of them

Wow! And I thought I was having trouble - I have about 20 a day. Though it seems to have dropped a little this week. Pain in the ass isn't it?

[aston217]

Ben, what's your criteria here?

Only it took me about 10 tries registering, before I got an account approved.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by aston217

Ben, what's your criteria here?

Only it took me about 10 tries registering, before I got an account approved.

See the stickied thread. You probably just got unlucky (ie you registered on a day with a bunch of spambots and I denied everyone), or your email looks like it could be suspicious.

I'm now using a new spam-protection setup (not the one mentioned above) that appears to be getting the job done. We had only 8 registrations while I was gone from Thursday-Sunday. That's much better. I've also installed a hack that more easily gets rid of the work of spammers. So at this point, I'm letting everyone through. If this works ok for a week or so, I won't bother with modding new users any longer.

[Ben E Lou]

Just two registrations on Monday. One looked like a likely spammer, the other looked real. I went ahead and allowed both through. It would be extremely difficult for a non-human to get through the setup I have now, and the new plugin I added gives me a "delete everything this guy has ever done and ban his IP in one click" option. I'll still give it a few more days, but it would appear that we won't be modding new users any longer.

[Mac Howard]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Just two registrations on Monday. One looked like a likely spammer, the other looked real. I went ahead and allowed both through. It would be extremely difficult for a non-human to get through the setup I have now, and the new plugin I added gives me a "delete everything this guy has ever done and ban his IP in one click" option. I'll still give it a few more days, but it would appear that we won't be modding new users any longer.

Give it a few more days, Ben, before celebrating. On Sunday, Mionday and Tuesday my spam registrations went down below 10% of recent numbers without my doing anything. But today, Wednesday, they've jumped back up to around 60% of recent. So hang a while yet

[MrBug708]

It was Columbus Day here in America..maybe it was a paid holiday for the spammers?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Just two registrations on Monday. One looked like a likely spammer, the other looked real. I went ahead and allowed both through. It would be extremely difficult for a non-human to get through the setup I have now, and the new plugin I added gives me a "delete everything this guy has ever done and ban his IP in one click" option. I'll still give it a few more days, but it would appear that we won't be modding new users any longer.

Only four new ones in the 30+ hours since this post. This is a *huge* decline. Given the way that this one works, I feel quite confident that only a human can get through it. Granted, there are human spammers now, but at least it appears to be hugely effective so far in getting rid of the bots.

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Only four new ones in the 30+ hours since this post. This is a *huge* decline. Given the way that this one works, I feel quite confident that only a human can get through it. Granted, there are human spammers now, but at least it appears to be hugely effective so far in getting rid of the bots.

Kodos would like to have a word with you about this human-only policy.

[Ben E Lou]

Effin' aliens and undead always causing problems.

[Ben E Lou]

Oh...side note: the handful of spam posts we've gotten in the last 48 hours have all been from users that I approved in September. Go figure.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Only four new ones in the 30+ hours since this post. This is a *huge* decline. Given the way that this one works, I feel quite confident that only a human can get through it. Granted, there are human spammers now, but at least it appears to be hugely effective so far in getting rid of the bots.

...and only 2 new ones in the ~24 hours since this post, and so far no spam from anyone who has signed up sent I installed this new hack a week ago. I'm going to turn off new user modding now.