WatchmenComicMovie.com Forum

I notice we're getting some spam recently. I've been looking into it recently and there are a couple of quick, easy changes that can make all the difference...

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &t=1437125

Custom profile fields are particularly effective:

http://www.phpbb.com/kb/article/custom- ... mmer-tool/

AYBGerrardo
Posts: 5187


(A bit of joshing does wonders, too!)

In the past week alone I've encountered at least three or four spambots. We never had that problem before, did we?

No, we haven't. We've had the occasional spambot here and there, but nothing on the level we've seen lately.

I sent an e-mail to DD a few days ago to warn him of the problem and ask that we shore up the defenses. He replied that there doesn't seem to be much more we can do, but that was before AYB's suggestions in the OP. If those solutions haven't already been implemented, I trust that DD and LaLuciano will get on that right away.

Unless we have a lot of people with the same birthday today, it looks like we have some more bots on are hands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox

I wouldn't have thought twice about it until I saw five of them were all variations of the same name.

*Edit Looks like another member of the JR/Radio family has joined us.

We added some custom fields to the registration. Let's see if that stops the bots. I also deleted at least 100 accounts created by the bots too.

Thanks DDC - hopefully it'll keep them at bay...

I was looking at my profile settings and found something you might want to change...

The middle number question gave the options 1, 2, 3
but when you put in 2 it says "The value of 'What is the middle number?' is too small, a minimum value of 3 is required."
I put in 3 and that was the answer so I presume you need to change the options to say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Anyway, good stuff and I hope it works!

A quick update. The past few days I've seen several accounts. I've also seen a near-car crash and a lady trip on the sidewalk. But more importantly, I've also seen some accounts that are suspicious.

*They post exactly one message and are never seen again.
*That one message is appropriate, on-topic, and otherwise normal...but completely unrelated to Watchmen. Usually found in the Movies/TV forum or the Anything Else forum.
*The sig always, without fail, includes a link to a possible spam/virus site.
*The username often, but not always, has "Watchmen" in the name, like it was auto-generated to stay on-topic.

Not pointing fingers, but it's a bit suspicious.

If you find any such accounts, send a PM to me or Doomsday and we'll see what we can do. Flagging the post is another good option.

I've set up a "type in the middle number" profile thing on my forum too and it's working perfectly. Some of the more advanced spambots seem to be getting through here, though. It might help to use more digits and more spread out numbers. Mine says

Type the middle number please (1138)

and the options are

2354
7639
1138
4242
9974

I'd recommend it