Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

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ShadoWarrior
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Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#1

Post by ShadoWarrior » Sun Mar 03, 2019 5:24 am

Due to an ongoing problem with a Russian spammer who's been creating accounts using well over a dozen different ISPs, and my getting awful tired of playing whack-a-mole with the SOB, I've gone through every PbP game forum's permissions and removed the ability of any blue nametag members (IOW, non-players and non-GMs/non-moderators) from being able to post whatsoever in any game forum. If the asshat switches to trying to spam the general forums (such as this one or the Cantina, for example), then I will do the same for them as well.

My action creates an inconvenience for GMs as new players will have to join a game via PM to a GM, and have an admin upgrade them to player status (red nametag) as they can no longer ask to join by posting in any of the game discussion threads. Sorry about this. I really hate having to do this, but I don't see much of an alternative. GMs will need to make it clear in their OOC first posts, and any other recruiting posts they may make on other sites, what new board members must do to become players here on this board.

I will soon be amending the new player instructional threads to reflect the change in what a new member must do to join a game.

As always, if you have comments or suggestions, I welcome your feedback.

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ThreeBFour
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#2

Post by ThreeBFour » Sun Mar 03, 2019 3:34 pm

My comment is you are awesome at this and your screen name seems to be well chosen.

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ShadoWarrior
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#3

Post by ShadoWarrior » Sun Mar 03, 2019 4:14 pm

Thanks, 3B4. It seems that my efforts have borne some fruit already. I was online and closely watching the board for about 3 hours after I made the changes. The Russian spammer/bot (the ????grify accounts) logged in simultaneously with two of the now-restricted accounts and got nowhere. Then a while later the (different) car loan spammer/bot created a new account (which I promptly squashed) but also got nowhere before I noticed it. So the change seems to be working as far as stopping spam posts in the forums. My hope, silly as it may be, is that perhaps after a while of making no progress the spammer/bot will give up and leave us alone. Just so you know how bad this spam problem is, 80-90% of the 173 user accounts on this board have been created by spammers. Someday I'll prune all of those dead accounts, just the spammer ones and not those created by real players (who simply dropped out of the board or never joined a game).

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ShadoWarrior
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#4

Post by ShadoWarrior » Sun Mar 03, 2019 5:31 pm

As of now:
  1. The board will now send an email to require new members to verify their registration.
  2. The board will not permit users to send emails via the board.
  3. Users are not permitted to subscribe to forums or threads.

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ThreeBFour
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#5

Post by ThreeBFour » Sun Mar 03, 2019 7:21 pm

@ShadoWarrior there is a Judygriphy in registered users a momment ago in "purple"

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ShadoWarrior
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#6

Post by ShadoWarrior » Sun Mar 03, 2019 7:30 pm

I can't do anything about the spammer/bot logging in with accounts that have already been created, short of removing the account completely. Purple means that the account is restricted (so it has either read-only or no access to forums, depending on the forum). The reason that I do not remove such accounts is so as to let the spammer/bot waste his/its time. He/it can't do any harm using a restricted account, as they are not allowed to post anything whatsoever.

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ThreeBFour
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#7

Post by ThreeBFour » Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:29 pm

Makes sense

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ShadoWarrior
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#8

Post by ShadoWarrior » Sun Mar 03, 2019 11:15 pm

The list in post #4 is now back in effect, and I have revamped the group forum permissions to restrict non-players (blue tags) to only being able to post in game discussion forums (so as to express their interest in joining a game) and the new member intro forum. We shouldn't be seeing any more spam from this point on. Famous last words, of course.

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swrider
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#9

Post by swrider » Sun Mar 03, 2019 11:40 pm

There are always vulnerabilities within the system. I can think of a few things which would really damage the board if someone wanted to, but I won't post them in the open.

Our main defense is that the forum doesn't pertain to much valuable information. Even information about our users is mostly just superficial. Spammers are trying to capitalize off the infrastructure more than the content.

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ShadoWarrior
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#10

Post by ShadoWarrior » Mon Mar 04, 2019 12:24 am

Oh, yeah, I could really break any board like this one if I was so inclined. Even in spite of the now-active email thingy, let alone how it was before. Most spammers are using tools that they did not create themselves, and they lack the skills to directly hack into sites with attacks on back-end infrastructure (I won't mention what sort of attacks those are, much less how they're done, so no one reading this thread including the search bots which index the site daily will have that info on file). Those with the skills to do real damage typically polish their skills on much juicier targets than hobbyist sites.

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ShadoWarrior
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#11

Post by ShadoWarrior » Mon Mar 04, 2019 2:12 pm

Email verification has stopped one of the spambots cold. Note the top 'user' in the image below:

Image

The bot has failed to make it past the email step so the new account has not been activated and thus it's an effectively DOA account. This is precisely what I had been hoping for and wanting. Yay! It means that I don't have to rush to deal with the account, as it's incapable of doing any harm. I can go in at any time at my leisure and look up the source IP address and ban the ISP and the email domain that was used.

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Doctor Who
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#12

Post by Doctor Who » Thu Jun 20, 2019 2:14 am

The website says 54 people are on right now, is that an issue with spam?
Give me about 5 minutes after a post, I'll probably edit it a bit before it is finalized.

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swrider
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#13

Post by swrider » Fri Jun 21, 2019 12:55 am

Most likely not. It may include bots which scan the forum and all websites frequently and guest users. I.e people with multiple devices open. Google reports that we have an average of 31 active unique users on this forum every month. I don't believe that but it shows that computers and humans count differently.

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ShadoWarrior
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Re: Anti-SPAM changes to the forums

#14

Post by ShadoWarrior » Tue Jun 25, 2019 2:09 am

I reset the high water mark. I don't like misleading stats.

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