Spam And Modding?


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It is kind of interesting, I wonder why most spam bots decide to leave posts in the modding section. What ever algorithm they use must determine that is a prime spot

edit added later//

maybe they leave them everywere, I just notice them more in the modding area.

Edited by shanenin
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They tend to target particular forums at a time. It used to be Open Chat and now its the Modding forum. You have to remember the admins/mods are not always around to remove spam as soon as its posted, but we always remove it as soon as we notice it. Also, staff does have certain mod privs in some forums, so if you do have mod privs in the forum that has spam feel free to move the spam post to the trash bin and notify a admin/mod about it and we'll take it from there. B)

B

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Also another note. It is probably not bots, but people posting "canned spam" (no pun intended). That's where the person can just go and grab some text and copy/paste it. Unless bots can now get around the image verification upon registration, its probably people.

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Also another note. It is probably not bots, but people posting "canned spam" (no pun intended). That's where the person can just go and grab some text and copy/paste it. Unless bots can now get around the image verification upon registration, its probably people.

Yes, Matt is absolutely correct. We have come to the conclusion is it most likely people with those "canned spam" (again, no pun intended) posts ready for copy and paste.

B

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sure, I bet image verification would be very hard to get around.

It is. That's why this has to be People and not Bots IMO. AFAIK, nobody has made a bot that can read the image and respond correctly to it, since the fonts used are not commonly recognized.

I've even had some that I couldn't read myself sometimes, and had to re-register to get to one that I could read...yeesh!

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sure, I bet image verification would be very hard to get around.

It is. That's why this has to be People and not Bots IMO. AFAIK, nobody has made a bot that can read the image and respond correctly to it, since the fonts used are not commonly recognized.

I've even had some that I couldn't read myself sometimes, and had to re-register to get to one that I could read...yeesh!

I get kind of panicky sometimes, "What if I can't read it". Yes i'm neurotic.

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LOL!!

Good....I'm not the ONLY one then eh..;)

I have excellent vision too (20/16 now, and I was 20/10 most of my life), so if I have trouble reading those things sometimes, you KNOW they're tough to read period...

It's some "Pay-per-Click" kinda deal with Commercial spammers, so they saturate everything that's popular and hope some idiots are unwary enough to go click some of their links. It's most likely $0.02 to $0.05 per click so to make any money they have to get some serious spamming done.

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And I'd like to clarify the posts aren't deleted, they are simiply removed and put in the "Trash Bin".

B

jeff at the risk of seeming mental incompotent (which I am but I don't like everyone to know it) can you explain to me why the posts aren't deleted? and where is the trash bin? is that just future reference for the mods?

oh dam, now I sound so mentally incompotent.

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  • 2 weeks later...
your isp sells your email address to spammers

Thats not quite true Marty. Most ISP's are very upstanding companies and would NEVER sell, rent or otherwise abuse their customer's information like that, it would be "business suicide". These larger companies would rather kill spam if possible and do aggresively filter email for known spam sources.

However, there are certain "Dodgy" ISP's that do sell their customer info if the price is right. Most of these are small online companies that entice folks with low prices in "select areas", abuse the heck outta them, get shut down, and then open again the next week under a new name and a new area.

They do this by Renting some bandwidth from large Cable or Dialup providers and offering the bandwidth to others for a Low price. Once they get shut down or Blacklisted they simply change the company name and do it again, maybe in another region.

Most providers are well known companies tho and would not sell your info, so stick with the better known provider names and you're safe.

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it is also a place for porno sites and already

a virus has been sent to this forum

maybe it is because it isnt used by the majority of posters

and can go undetected for a while

you never know with these ba------s

as long as they catch some one

marty

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  • 1 month later...

sure, I bet image verification would be very hard to get around.

It is. That's why this has to be People and not Bots IMO. AFAIK, nobody has made a bot that can read the image and respond correctly to it, since the fonts used are not commonly recognized.

I've even had some that I couldn't read myself sometimes, and had to re-register to get to one that I could read...yeesh!

I've been floating around the board for a while and just noticed this thread.

Dave is actually incorrect about nobody making bots that can read the image. they are out there. I'm not going to give links here for obvious reasons, however they do exist. I found one a couple of weeks ago for $400 USD made by a company in New York called Peer 1 Network Inc.

Here is a little info on their product FAQ page.

  • # Mutithreaded submitting: over 50 simultaneously running threads possible! (30 threads are recommended for optimal performance under 128 Kbps bandwidth)
    # Software can perform registration at forums (if necessary for posting messages) and automatically fill in the required fields. Upon successful registration [program name] posts the user-specified message and/or links.
    # The powerful built-in proxy-server checking script locates available proxy-servers worldwide, choosing anonymous addresses among them.
    # Software is able to work with lots of different types of forums and guestbooks: phpBB and PHP-Nuke with any modifications, yaBB, VBulletin, Invision Power Board, IconBoard, UltimateBB, exBB, phorum.org, wiki, different types of bulletin boards and even custom-written code.
    # Attention: unique feature – software works around EVERY possible type of protection from automatic registration, including:
    - Pictocode protection (tickets, captcha), which look something like: "Enter the number you see in the box". Details...
    - E-mail activation protection. Details...
    - Java-script protection. Details...
    # During the process of posting a detailed log is created with precise path-links to posted messages so that you can check every link and every posted message afterwards.
    # A built-in proprietary "Question-answer" system.
    # A variations system, using which you can post up to 10000 messages all looking different but with similar contextual meaning and the user-defined hyperlinks in them. It helps to broaden the key queries (for Search Engine optimization) and protect your posts from being filtered out by Search Engines (that is, your posts will be included in SERPs).
    # If the forum has more than one category, the software chooses the one most suitable for the message, otherwise it sends the message to off-top, flame sections or the like, and in case those do not exist - to the most visited category on the forum.
    # BB-code can be used.
    # The following forum base processing tools are included: repeated links deletion, hit descending sort, service denial according to customizable black list, and various filters. The program informs the users about availability of new versions and possesses many other powerful features.

The system is fully user-independent and requires minimum skills to handle: you only need to choose the proper links database, create a message text with one or several hyperlinks and hit the 'Start' button. THAT IS ALL.

The software package includes the Hrefer program and databases with links to more than 72.000 forums.

They have recently revamped their system, because when I saw it the first time, they were stating that spamming forums was legal and did not violate the canned spam law. So there is no such thing as safety against the bots anymore.

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