Spammers.


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Lately, more and more spammers have been signing up and continuing to post the same garbage (Nike shoes and the DVD crap). I know you guys are well aware of this but I am wondering why registration process isn't being beefed up?

Just reporting the spam for the mods is beginning to be a slow process now and the spam threads are getting unnecessary views and clicks because of it.

:/

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Lately, more and more spammers have been signing up and continuing to post the same garbage (Nike shoes and the DVD crap). I know you guys are well aware of this but I am wondering why registration process isn't being beefed up?

Just reporting the spam for the mods is beginning to be a slow process now and the spam threads are getting unnecessary views and clicks because of it.

:/

I believe they are taking steps to resolve this matter. The main step is that they have stopped free timebombed email accounts from being used for the signup process. Only free accounts such as hotmail or yahoo are allowed.

Although it does not take much to create a new account in yahoo etc, it is a lot more time consuming for these people.

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Rapidshare type captchas (the kitten ones) or 2x email verification process.

For every fake account, there is probably 1000 real accounts. It would be pointless to make all those 1000 people struggle over a spammer, where he can easily be banned with a few clicks of the mouse.

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What types of suggestions would you like us to implement?

I think simple questions are intuitive enough. Math questions don't pose any sort of cultural barrier.

2 + 2 =

6 - 1 =

14 / 2 =

2^7 =

sqrt(13) =

ln(1) =

Derivative of the function f(x) = 14.

Number of natural numbers between -5 and 5.

Integrate [sin(x)]^2.

:D

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For every fake account, there is probably 1000 real accounts. It would be pointless to make all those 1000 people struggle over a spammer, where he can easily be banned with a few clicks of the mouse.

Struggle? I didn't know users registering at Neowin were in pain.

It will be a minor update on the registration process already in place. Added benefits include NO MORE SPAM THREADS and less work for the mods. For example, look at the Invision Power forums registration process (link). It has a two-step captcha process: (1) Enter the words seen in the image and (2) copy a line of code into a textbox. Compare that with Neowin's registration process. I'm sure they see less spam...

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Is there anyway users with say under 5 posts are void of being able to post urls in their first five posts?

Guess that's kind of annoying for legit people though.

How about just the first post can't contain a url?

Coding that would probably be a pain in the ass though :laugh:

I don't mind just reporting spam, but I'm sure some of you guys might come up with some good ideas to help Neowin :yes:

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Is there anyway users with say under 5 posts are void of being able to post urls in their first five posts?

Guess that's kind of annoying for legit people though.

How about just the first post can't contain a url?

Coding that would probably be a pain in the ass though :laugh:

I don't mind just reporting spam, but I'm sure some of you guys might come up with some good ideas to help Neowin :yes:

These new propositions are like airport security. Non-terrorists (98% of the world (if were lucky)) can't stand it, but think of it like this, you would rather be screened, because then you can be assured that if there is a terrorist that wants to board the plane, it's more difficult for them to get on.

Same goes for Neowin.

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These new propositions are like airport security. Non-terrorists (98% of the world (if were lucky)) can't stand it, but think of it like this, you would rather be screened, because then you can be assured that if there is a terrorist that wants to board the plane, it's more difficult for them to get on.

Same goes for Neowin.

:laugh:, great analogy ;)

I hear what you're saying, whenever measures get implemented that require user effort, they have to be the best balance between effective and non-time consuming.

Get the balance wrong and you annoy legit users.

Get it right, and hopefully spam (or the terrorists ;)) get put off.

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These new propositions are like airport security. Non-terrorists (98% of the world (if were lucky)) can't stand it, but think of it like this, you would rather be screened, because then you can be assured that if there is a terrorist that wants to board the plane, it's more difficult for them to get on.

Same goes for Neowin.

I'm sure people understand the problem without your terrorism analogy. 2% of the world population are terrorists? Please.

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How about members with less than say 10 posts being unable to make new threads.

Ok so they can post spam in existing threads but they can be deleted and banned early without making lots of new useless threads.

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I think simple questions are intuitive enough. Math questions don't pose any sort of cultural barrier.

Nah, bots aren't emotional so we need to add meaningful questions like "If you were a tree, what sort of tree would you be?"

Or just give them the Replicant test from BladeRunner.

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How about members with less than say 10 posts being unable to make new threads.

Ok so they can post spam in existing threads but they can be deleted and banned early without making lots of new useless threads.

A lot of people initially sign up to ask a question, I wouldn't think this is a good idea.

Many people will tell you the reason they signed up to NW is to ask for help. Not being able to create a topic, means not being able to ask for help (unless they happen to be able to ask in an existing thread).

That's why I suggested no urls in 1 post wonders. If a spammer can't link you, it makes them less effective. Although there are as we know easy workarounds around blockage of active links... so it falls flat in some ways.

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Incidentally, the serious answer is that we will likely wait for IPB to implement security/registration improvements.

Why not use the same registration process already seen on IPB forums?

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Why not use the same registration process already seen on IPB forums?

I would have assumed that we do but it has been a while since I signed up.

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As it's vaguely relevant, could there be some method of preventing people replying with 3 words or less, in posts. It would stop a lot of 'actual human being' spam. If all someone has to add to the topic is ':lol:' or 'QFT', or 'LMAO', then they needn't have added anything at all.

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Well I'm definitely not fond of completely restricting a new users' posting privilege.

It's been a long time since I registered also, so I don't know what you have to do now.

However, It would seem as a few repeated characters isn't 'getting it' anymore. It may need to be LITTLE more complex now.

Edited by Myke
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I had a mod I put on one of my phpBB installs that would do this:

You would hide one of the options on the account registration. (e.g website) A normal person would not see this field when they register and so they would not try to fill it in, but a script would fill out all "fields" hidden or not and when a spammer filled out this invisible field their account was blocked from being able to post. Here is a list I have of known spamming domains too. It may help you a lot to just block all of these. (See attachment)

bots_email.txt

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