Likely Forum Spam Coming Today

[Ben E Lou]

So as, I assume, a part of whatever went wrong with the forum, a setting got changed that forces all new users to be moderated. Dozens of legit-looking new people (I presume FOF8 newbies) have registered accounts in the last couple of weeks that were sitting in the moderation queue.

Unfortunately, the moderation queue only has three real options: mass-approve, mass-delete, or one-by-one. I can't mass-approve only new accounts since 11/15 or anything like that, so as a result, I just approved all accounts in the mod queue, which certainly included some spammers who have been in the queue for years.

I'll be around the computer most of the morning, so hopefully I can catch them quickly.

[Ben E Lou]

So far not nearly as bad as what I expected. Four posts pretty much immediately after I did the mass-approval, but none since then.

[Critch]

Thought you meant some asshat was going to set up the automatic Trump twitter posts again.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Critch

Thought you meant some asshat was going to set up the automatic Trump twitter posts again.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by Critch

Thought you meant some asshat was going to set up the automatic Trump twitter posts again.

winner

[Dutch]

[panerd]

Good to hear my friend Steklodeldzc was wondering when he could get registered and post pictures of his house.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by panerd

Good to hear my friend Steklodeldzc was wondering when he could get registered and post pictures of his house.

#winning

[CrescentMoonie]

I'm looking forward to the unlikely forum spam.

[Ben E Lou]

Same thing happened again with the issues we were having earlier with logins. Just noticed it now. Gotta accept a bunch of new people, certainly some spammers included.

Side note: I just deleted a spam post from a registration that happened in 2008. Giving them the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't approved until early December, still, what kinda weak-ass spam code takes nearly three months to run?????

[Shkspr]

So most of these spam notices getting through are in Cyrillic, which raises the question: Are you SURE we aren't just seeing the Trump Twitter posts?

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by Shkspr

So most of these spam notices getting through are in Cyrillic, which raises the question: Are you SURE we aren't just seeing the Trump Twitter posts?

[korme]

I'm not familiar with how dated our registration process is, but there isn't a captcha that would stop the spam signups? It's really unfortunate that some legitimate new user might sign up and then have to wait weeks to go through a moderation process, perhaps losing interest along the way.

[cartman]

A lot of the captcha stuff has been compromised. There is a big database of the pictures with their proper responses that the bots use. So if the CAPTCHA isn't continually updating their pics, they are behind the curve.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ben E Lou]

Assuming we don't have massive issues again where people can't log in for weeks, the setting won't get changed again, so the issue raised by the forum's resident chronic complainer is null and void as usual. And CAPTCHA isn't an option with our version of vBulletin, but cartman is correct that it's not all that successful.

I do have NoSpam! installed. I just changed the question to something that the vast majority of people I would want to be able to sign up for the forum would know off the top of their head, and most nitwits would be able to Google it. Maybe the previous one was able to be picked up with automation. (It was something along the lines of "what is the three-letter abbreviation for the most popular American football league?") Recently, we've been getting 50-70 registration attempts per day. Let's see if this slows it down. It's encouraging that with unmodded registrations for the last four hours, we've had zero spam posts. I'm cautiously optimistic.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

It's encouraging that with unmodded registrations for the last four hours, we've had zero spam posts. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Might want to scroll down a couple posts.

[Ben E Lou]

Heh. Got it. That was a January 2017 registration, so no biggie there. (The concern was/is that we might be dealing with some human spammers, in which case the NoSpam question change would have been meaningless. So far no *newly* registered users have spammed. That's what I'm optimistic about.)

[Bobble]

im glad i finally was able to register. im a nigerian prince with an awesome financial opportunity for you guys. email me your bank info for the deets.

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[albionmoonlight]

new one at the end of my amateur photography thread.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

new one at the end of my amateur photography thread.

Another registrant from January there.

Looks like the new question did the trick, at least for now. Only 11 new registrations yesterday (compared to 50 or more on each of the 10 previous days.) I'm guessing most/all of those 11 took place before I changed the question.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Another registrant from January there.

Looks like the new question did the trick, at least for now. Only 11 new registrations yesterday (compared to 50 or more on each of the 10 previous days.) I'm guessing most/all of those 11 took place before I changed the question.

Yeah, this dried up the spammer registrations. The 10 days prior to the question changing, daily registrations went 85-62-60-55-51-78-60-51-68-70. We had 11 on the day mentioned above. Since then? No more than 4 in any single day.

Now what's interesting to me, though, is that most (all?) of the older spammers are behaving not like bots, but like humans. For example, what made me look for this thread is that I just did a ban and clean for an account that posted *16* nonsensical posts. Two things that appear human about it, though:

1. The account was created in November 2016, which means it was approved in that mass-approval on 12/3. As I posted then, there were four immediate spammers who posted within moments of that approval. But four months later???

2. The 16 posts occurred not immediately, but over the course of 9 minutes, with only one or two pairs showing the same minute, and of the four or five that I looked at, none were identical. The doesn't appear to be the work of automation; it sounds like a human clicking around various threads and copying and pasting different stuff to make posts.

This isn't a one-off, either. Just about all of the spam that I've cleaned lately is coming from accounts that have been active for months and if there are multiple posts, they aren't all posting one after another.

But what STILL makes no sense to me about my own theory is that the new question is easy to answer for most Americans, and it's a quick Google for anyone who doesn't know. There's no way that humans are trying and failing to create spammer accounts. Maybe bots are creating the accounts but humans have to follow up with posts? Maybe we were a short-term target and they've moved on elsewhere? Just weird. *shurg*

[AnalBumCover]

Marvel Cinematic Universe on Netflix - Front Office Football Central

[Ben E Lou]

I don't think I'll ever cease to be fascinated by the "human spammer" aspect of this stuff. We just had a spammer similar to the one I talked about a couple of posts up. Registered January 2017. No posts since then. Posts 13 messages over the course of several minutes in multiple forums just now. Seems incredibly inefficient. *shurg*

[Edward64]

Oh, it was spam? Was about to checkout the LatamDate and see what it was about.

[CrimsonFox]

Но вы когда-нибудь рассматривали преимущества владения одним из наших новых наборов современных энциклопедий?

[CrimsonFox]

and just so im clear that's a joke not a foxbot

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by ThomasPr

{spam links removed and user deleted}

This one might be a new record. Registration 12/1/2016, first spam post 11/22/2017.

[heybrad]

In a bit a perfect timing, I looked at his profile and he was from... wait for it... Turkey!

[CrimsonFox]

[Ben E Lou]

Shkspr, thanks for the report, and yes, the 10/30/2016 registration did break the record. I know this with 100% certainty because I had the "One Touch Ban And Clean Spam" tool set to a max of 365 days since registration, so that we didn't accidentally delete any long-time users, and this was the first time I've had to increase that setting. (The tool allows us to click one button that deletes the user, deletes all of their posts/threads, and bans their IP all in one shot.)

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

I do have NoSpam! installed. I just changed the question to something that the vast majority of people I would want to be able to sign up for the forum would know off the top of their head, and most nitwits would be able to Google it. Maybe the previous one was able to be picked up with automation. (It was something along the lines of "what is the three-letter abbreviation for the most popular American football league?") Recently, we've been getting 50-70 registration attempts per day. Let's see if this slows it down. It's encouraging that with unmodded registrations for the last four hours, we've had zero spam posts. I'm cautiously optimistic.

So this was done on 2/23/2017. The question I changed it to then was...

Who lost the 2012 US Presidential Election?:Mitt Romney:Romney:romney:mitt romney


Registration numbers aroundthat time...

February 19, 2017

And from then up through January 2018, we had not a single day with double-digit registration numbers. Then came 1/25:

January 18, 2018

(and double digits every day since this time, too, and obviously a minor flurry of spamming recently)

So apparently it took the Russians 11 months to figure out that Romney was the 2012 loser. I just changed the question again. (POTUS 2009-2017).