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can we get a mechanism in place to help foil spam bots?

Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 2:46 pm
by philipgar
It seems like this site is getting spammed more often lately (the problems with being popular). If there any way to institute some simple soul asylum question on the registration page to try to foil them? Most of the bots just know how to create an account on generic phpbb systems, and then post immediately. If you added a single field to the page something along the lines of "what was soul asylum's biggest hit song", or even "fill in the blank: Soul _ _ _ _ _ _" and just make them type in asylum it should foil the spammers. Even something like word on on page y or implement one of those captchas. It's just reaching the point where I'm seeing iphones for sale 3 or 4 times a week, although maybe that's a testament to how often I'm checking this board, as the spam is removed remarkably fast.

Phil

Re: can we get a mechanism in place to help foil spam bots?

Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 4:59 pm
by AlyssaJones
That's a good idea Phil. I've actually talked to one of our admins about such an idea recently. We didn't discuss it much, but he said he'd try to do something about it soon.

I just looked at the registration form and the human-verification thing in place is a box that asks you to type "Dave" in it, but I guess the bots are getting through that. I know the bots are pretty "smart" but there has to be something that can be done, don't you think?

Re: can we get a mechanism in place to help foil spam bots?

Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:12 pm
by Monolith Maniac
I'll definitely see what can be done. That "Dave" security prompt looks like it lasted only so long; or so it seems.

I do check the site multiple times daily, and maybe add a show/post occasionally so that's why some posts get removed quicker than others (and it depends on the time of day the posts are posted).

I would have no problem though implementing a captcha and/or pass phrase myself right now but I got to read into it myself a little more. I'd definitely like to see if Jakob could be of assistance (that's more his department than mine; I've only done minor things to the forum).

Until then though, I'll just continue deleting the posts off the site as soon as I can.

Re: can we get a mechanism in place to help foil spam bots?

Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2011 4:31 pm
by Homesick
I'm at my parents' house over the summer which means I'm not at the computer quite as much. I hadn't noticed more spam than usual, but then again that may well be because Jim has been removing it quickly.

The spam bots already seem pretty smart: Currently, the anti-spam instruction reads "Please type Dave into this field", and the word Dave is not emphasized in any way. Somehow, they still figure it out. I've heard of "spam farms" that operate by having bots do most of the work and then just send the verification questions to actual people, but I'm not sure how common that really is.

In any case, it should be possible to avoid that by changing the question to: "What's the first name of Soul Asylum's lead singer?"

I'll try that out. Let me know how it works! (I won't be checking the site much during the summer.)

Re: can we get a mechanism in place to help foil spam bots?

Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2011 6:06 pm
by Heather1983
That sounds like a good idea, but what if there are new fans who may not know anything about the band , just that they heard a song and liked it?
I am sure the information is easy to look up on line, but some people are aliitle lazy to do so. I would think.