A few remarks about spamming bots …

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
1. If the results are more than let's say 5 pages, then it's most likely a bot.

2. If almost all results are user names from forums, then even more so.

3. If the time zone of Yangkee730 is set towards China, then you'll have another clue.

"Alrik Fassbauer" : More than 10 pages of search result, most if not all from forums… I think I just unmasked the last new generation bot, amazing!

ROFL !!!

Got me !!!

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
This is a glimpse into the future: The next generation bots will try to act like humans - or to be considered as humans, as a result to their replies.

That's pretty interesting… and scary! Imagine befriending one.

It put it here … Do NOT use ANY site that has the words "Carla's Choice" in its title !!!

There are hundreds or even thousands of that out there !

I just found out via a site called "Carla's Choice of star wars battlefront pictures links and sites" that this site contains spam-texts, and probably malware, too !

In my case, there was a dialog-box popping out claiming that my PC was infected … Well, I fear now, that it is indeed the case now … I must do a scan right now …

I can only warn of sites with this name !!!

There is one at the GamerDad forums that is very human-like … it had ~4-5 posts before I figured it out, and only then because a post was a duplicate from another thread, but actually fit ok in both.

Yes, I had a similar thing recently, too.

A few days ago I stopped a bot in the other forum I'm in, and it seemed to be an attempt to use the current hype about the death of Mr. M. Jackson : The bot was called "jaksones".

By the way, there is an increasing number of bots with the e-mail adress of "chongsoft.com". I advise to stop everything with that doman in the e-mail adress.

Uh, just found a spammer in a forum :

Benutzername: CabDially
Rang: Newbie
Wohnort: Papua New Guinea
Alter: 27
Tätigkeit: Legal
Interessen: Dancing

It is interesting that someone with this age and interests has nothing but spam in his head …

Two updates :

Benutzername: seroaveboaw
Rang: Newbie
Wohnort: Israel
Alter: 47
Tätigkeit: Media
Interessen: Coffee and conversation

And someone names "quickinq", selling technical stuff.

In the forum I'm moderating in we have had the first spam bot since a major forum software update several months ago : The "name" is bolanle4me

I'm worried that this might mean that the newest security measures and/or captchas are no more safe anymore.

We're still stomping 2-3 spammers a day, but Myrthos made some changes a few weeks ago that pretty well eliminated the automated bots. Corwin and I (as the primary bot squashers) can keep up with human spammers well enough.

And we are grateful for your excellent work.

Ah, good.

I run a bicycling board based in the USA.

What I did was put a required question in the sign up process. If they do not answer it correctly they can't sign up.

All bicyclists in the USA know who Lance Armstrong is so my question is:

What is Lances last name?

Its been 2 years now and not a single spammer has signed up.

The question doesn't have to be hard at all.

For here perhaps have: What does RPG stand for?

Originally Posted by Toff
For here perhaps have: What does RPG stand for?

That is a good one because the non-gaming people are most likely to come up with Rocket Propelled Grenade.

That's actually what Myrthos added to our registration. I hate to mention the actual questions being used, but suffice to say that anyone that's ever played an RPG can easily answer them.

Originally Posted by Toff
What I did was put a required question in the sign up process. If they do not answer it correctly they can't sign up.

All bicyclists in the USA know who Lance Armstrong is so my question is:

What is Lances last name?

Its been 2 years now and not a single spammer has signed up.

The question doesn't have to be hard at all.

If it was a French bsed biking forum, then the question that's not really hard at all would probably be :

"What kind of doping has Mr. Armstrong been accused of ?"

Now that would be a question *everyone* here in Europe would be able to answer … *evil grin*

I wonder what the Spanish would say?

Originally Posted by Toff
The question doesn't have to be hard at all.

Who's Armstrong?

And btw, I am selling these fine leather jackets.

Captcha no longer seems to be any defence at all.
DS forum had ~1000 members on January 1st and 2 900 spambots have registered in the three weeks since. I could cry.
The only laugh I get from these spambots, a bunch of them are constantly trying to post and don't realise they were banned months ago.
I wish I could ask a simple question for new registrations, eg "Are you a person?", but MOD powers are very limited on that board. (btw it is a Russian board….lol)