Guild of Writers

You have obviously noticed that spam has gotten much worse over the past few days... I am now watching the member list and forum quite carefully. Please pass it around that any new account looking like a spammer will receive an automatic IP ban, no questions asked. Spammers get the same treatment, obviously. In the next few days, I will be changing the registration page to include additional humanity checks. If these do not improve the situation OR it deteriorates further before I can implement those changes, I will require Administrators to validate all new accounts... This change will be purely at my discretion. As stated before, all new suspicious accounts will be banned, so keep that in mind.

Things that qualify as suspicious:

* Your email address contains @mail.ru, is from some unheard of country, or is an unintelligible mess of characters.
* You list a third world country as your location.
* You link to a .ru or .su website
* You link to a website that is exceedingly lengthy

These are just a few items off the top of my head. I'm getting quite good at determining which members are spam bots, but they join faster than I can ban them. If you qualify as "suspicious," I recommend you PM me immediately to say that you are human.

My Request: Please ignore any new spam topics. Do not post on them as this makes deleting them more cumbersome. In other words, you change one click to five clicks. I don't want to waste my time. You may report them if you wish as that makes them more visible to me in the topic list. Reporting any spam posts in well-established topics is also helpful.

Thanks!

Yes, it has suddenly picked up starting last week. Spam bots are registering en masse, bypassing both Captcha and Turing tests. Not that it diddn't happen before, but we used to get all those registrations without getting actual spam posts.

Of the three sites I admin, I had to go to require validation by administrator on one (phpBB), and am thinking of it on the other phpBB one. The third one is using VBulletin and so far, so good.

some registration e-mail addresses we're banning Show Spoiler

@cashette.com
@mail.ru
@instant-profits.biz
@allofwallmart.org
@packmanfuns.org
britneytompson.org
@smithandjack.org
@dosgh2840g4re.org
@jackiechanrulez.info
@dfgh02gh24hg.info
@dwhg0284gerr.org
@afdoih30hg30h.org
@oidfgh02hg20.info
@2youm.info
@dw0gh824g24g.org
@di.com
@pipelaz.com
@fizasox.com
@mail.uz
@dsigh0248g24.info
@2youn.info
@freepochta.info
@inmail24.com
@fgh028hg0284.info
@sandy777blog.info
@servicefreemail.info
@.ru
@.by
@.ea
@.lv
@runbox.com
@vpspt.info
@mymail-in.net
@.cn
@001.md
@123mail.org
@126.com
@163.com
@1net.gr
@21cn.com
@arcor.de
@atlantmail.com
@bestmail.us
@bigmir.net
@bk.ru
@bluebottle.com
@dbzmail.com
@discardmail.com
@dodgeit.com
@e4ward.com
@elfox.net
@elite1000.org
@emailias.com
@emails.ru
@fastacura.com
@fastchevy.com
@fastchrysler.com
@fastkawasaki.com
@fastmazda.com
@fastmitsubishi.com
@fastnissan.co
@fastsubaru.com
@fastsuzuki.com
@fasttoyota.com
@fastyamaha.com
@freenet.de
@gawab.com
@gala.net
@getresponse.com
@gmx.de
@gmx.net
@go2.pl
@guerrillamail.net
@humlog.com
@i.ua
@inbox.ru
@inmail.sk
@inmail24.com
@jetable.com
@jetable.net
@jetable.org
@kasmail.com
@krovatka.su
@link2mail.net
@lviv.in
@mail.bg
@mail.net
@mail.ru
@mail.zp.ua
@mail15.com
@mail333.com
@maileater.com
@mailexpire.com
@mailinater.com
@mailinator.com
@mailmoat.com
@mailnull.com
@mailshell.com
@mailzilla.com
@me.by
@megabox.ru
@messagebeamer.de
@mymail-in.net
@mytrashmail.com
@netmails.net
@netzidiot.de
@nm.ru
@nobulk.com
@nurfuerspam.de
@o2.pl
@oneoffemail.com
@peugeot-club.org
@pisem.net
@pochta.ru
@pochta.ws
@pookmail.com
@rambler.ru
@runbox.com
@sibmail.com
@sneakemail.com
@sofort-mail.de
@sogetthis.com
@spam.la
@spamex.com
@spamgourmet.com
@spaml.com
@spamtrail.com
@telegraf.by
@tempemail.net
@temporaryinbox.com
@tlen.pl
@trash-mail.de
@trashmail.net
@ukr.net
@ulmail.net
@unlimail.net
@vfemail.net
@walala.org
@web.de
@wh4f.org
@xmail.net
@zoemail.com

So someone finally coded a spambot that can pass the captcha and turing tests?
Annoying!
(EDIT: Ah they did so a while ago)

Would it work (in terms of spam prevention) to change the names of the fields in the registration page to something specific for this forum, or are the spambots too analytical for that?
(like checking which of the fields has "Username: " in front of it)

EDIT:
Did some searching around, and found this interesting page: http://www.thesamet.com/blog/2006/12/21/fighting-spam-on-phpbb-forums/
Maybe we could add a question like:
What does 'GoW' stand for?
A: Guild of Writers
B: What's your immune system for anyway?
C: The cake is a lie
D: 42

On a side note, I now understand how Google caused our spam problems.

The safeguard I plan to add is:

What is 2 + 2?

The field will have 5 in it by default.

Thanks for those email domains, Chacal

How should I go about reporting spam bots? I already found one. I can't find the report button on its page.

I'll send you a PM. Although you don't have to look hard.

(Spam bots are annoying. It seem every time you do something to stop them, they just keep coming. They are like little evil roaches.)

Tsar Hoikas wrote:The safeguard I plan to add is:

What is 2 + 2?

The field will have 5 in it by default.

Thanks for those email domains, Chacal

I used a similar thing in Texturu.org. You have to solve an equation like "(four multiplied by six) plus 2 equals..."
If you want to reuse my php code, just PM me. It's only some few lines of code.

Good News: It seems that I have a lot of the popular spammer IPs banned. Their rate of joining has decreased exponentially.

Aikijitsu wrote:How should I go about reporting spam bots? I already found one. I can't find the report button on its page.

I'll send you a PM. Although you don't have to look hard.

(Spam bots are annoying. It seem every time you do something to stop them, they just keep coming. They are like little evil roaches.)

That will be fine, though I'm pretty good about catching those that have joined recently... Another IP banned

tachzusamm wrote:I used a similar thing in Texturu.org. You have to solve an equation like "(four multiplied by six) plus 2 equals..."
If you want to reuse my php code, just PM me. It's only some few lines of code.

I'll probably write my own because I'll have to fit it into phpBB 3's registration scripts... Besides, I like writing my own code and trying it out (Read: Banging head against desk wondering why it doesn't work)

In crafting your trap, bear in mind that there are sweatshops full of people in Russia and other east-european countries, that work all day getting past such traps and registering accounts for later use by spam bots. The idea is to make it easy enough for people genuinely interested in what we do, but hard enough for the spam registers that they will give up.

Right, which is why I don't think you should go for something generic like a math problem, as anyone at all can solve that.. whereas if you do something uru or d'ni related, it would take a little more work for someone without a clue what we do to register. I seem to recall some site asking a question like what is catherine's relationship to atrus or some such thing.

Yep, the Guild of Messengers does use Uru related questions and it is working ok.
(the answer has missing character(s) to be given/typed)

Szark, Leonardo, Theremin or Al'Kaera could give you more infos.