spam posts

[djevox]

Having been an admin on multiple forums from everything from SimpleMachine software, Vbulletin, etc... there are steps that can be deployed for the user registration process that greatly limits the amount of trash that gets in.

Something has changed with a vbulletin update recently, because there has been a surge of spam within the last month or two. I don’t own any forums on the bulletin, but I’m guessing there is a little bit of configuration that got overwritten when an update happened. I reported roughly a dozen spam threads this morning, and they were popping up as I was reporting others. With how difficult vbulletin is to do things from CLI, I doubt that a script is doing this unless somebody invested a lot of time in the a script that would make registration and post a thread. That could completely be the case, but vbulletin makes it difficult to web scrape with auth.

edit: that was more general information, not directed at you.

 

[HSKR R/T]

Something has changed with a vbulletin update recently, because there has been a surge of spam within the last month or two. I don’t own any forums on the bulletin, but I’m guessing there is a little bit of configuration that got overwritten when an update happened. I reported roughly a dozen spam threads this morning, and they were popping up as I was reporting others. With how difficult vbulletin is to do things from CLI, I doubt that a script is doing this unless somebody invested a lot of time in the a script that would make registration and post a thread. That could completely be the case, but vbulletin makes it difficult to web scrape with auth.

edit: that was more general information, not directed at you.

Seems there have been a lot of crashes lately as well. Times where the forum won't load for me, check back 10 minutes later and it's fine

 

[djevox]

Seems there have been a lot of crashes lately as well. Times where the forum won't load for me, check back 10 minutes later and it's fine

Yeah, the errors make it look like it’s the site failing, but I have a feeling it’s Cloudflare. Errors a lot of times don’t match what the error message says, if that makes sense.

 

[Brutal_HO]

Something has changed with a vbulletin update recently, because there has been a surge of spam within the last month or two. I don’t own any forums on the bulletin, but I’m guessing there is a little bit of configuration that got overwritten when an update happened. I reported roughly a dozen spam threads this morning, and they were popping up as I was reporting others. With how difficult vbulletin is to do things from CLI, I doubt that a script is doing this unless somebody invested a lot of time in the a script that would make registration and post a thread. That could completely be the case, but vbulletin makes it difficult to web scrape with auth.

edit: that was more general information, not directed at you.

site runs on xenforo.

 

[HSKR R/T]

Yeah, the errors make it look like it’s the site failing, but I have a feeling it’s Cloudflare. Errors a lot of times don’t match what the error message says, if that makes sense.

Usually a host error. At some point, if it keeps up, should look to a different host.

 

[Ratchet]

edit: that was more general information, not directed at you.

Oh I know. No worries bud!

As far as this forums user authentication, I'm unaware how it is currently setup for new members. Might be wise to turn on admin/moderator member approval for a few days. That usually makes them go away.

 

[Jared B]

Having been an admin on multiple forums from everything from SimpleMachine software, Vbulletin, etc... there are steps that can be deployed for the user registration process that greatly limits the amount of trash that gets in.

I have just made some captcha changes both here and on HDRams which will hopefully stop the spammers if not slow them down. Unfortunately, you can't catch them all, the site checks new registrations against the stopforumspam database, DNS blacklist, project honeypot, and of course a captcha which I have just changed. It's at the point where I get tens of emails a day from actual users that can't get past the registration but spammers seem to, although oddly enough I've seen a lot of spam come from accounts registered years ago which is odd.

Seems there have been a lot of crashes lately as well. Times where the forum won't load for me, check back 10 minutes later and it's fine

Usually a host error. At some point, if it keeps up, should look to a different host.

We have been doing a lot of server optimizations over the past 2 months or so and have been taking the sites offline for a few mins at a time for server reboots etc in an effort to increase stability and resolve some mail server issues we are still experiencing. Moving to a different host has been discussed with out IT guy and definitely isn't off the table.

That said I agree with the sentiment here that we do need to add more mods to keep the community running smoothly, I'm on it.

 

[Ratchet]

Yeah, I've had to deal with the same thing. Even went as far as disabling new registrations for several days in an attempt to pick though any suspect account. And as mentioned, some were years old.

 

[djevox]

Yeah, I've had to deal with the same thing. Even went as far as disabling new registrations for several days in an attempt to pick though any suspect account. And as mentioned, some were years old.

From my very short time as a mod on here, there were only a few user registrations to pick through. This place is in a really good spot, and it should just take some small tweaks to get perfect.

I don’t have a hand in this, but Admins need to balance being too restrictive and not being restrictive enough. Either way, I am clearing stuff out if it pops up starting around five or 6 AM and as I see it. I really enjoy this community, so I check in a few times an hour (or more) from 6 AM to 9 PM.

 

[edrclark]

I have been guilty of not showing up as much as I used to. Lately I have been hanging out at hdram more then here, primarily because I have a ram 2500 on order. I love my 1500, but a bigger boat needs a bigger truck

 

[Ratchet]

From my very short time as a mod on here, there were only a few user registrations to pick through. This place is in a really good spot, and it should just take some small tweaks to get perfect.

I don’t have a hand in this, but Admins need to balance being too restrictive and not being restrictive enough. Either way, I am clearing stuff out if it pops up starting around five or 6 AM and as I see it. I really enjoy this community, so I check in a few times an hour (or more) from 6 AM to 9 PM.

Likewise. I report the spam when I see it. Really enjoy the board here. Hate spammers more than I hate Ford.

 

[HemiDude]

Just a quick prop to all the staff, admins, mods - Feels like the spam has dropped off substantially this week - Thanks for the efforts!!

 

[Nsleone]

Just a quick prop to all the staff, admins, mods - Feels like the spam has dropped off substantially this week - Thanks for the efforts!!

I second that! Have not seen much of any spam lately *knock on wood*

 

[djevox]

Great, we’re doing a fair amount of intervention so it won’t be seen by everyone.