Spammers.

[volvodspec]

can't we just FWD all spam messages on the forum to Aymat's mailbox?!

that might get the ball rolling to ban the cyborg bastards more easaly / change signup procedure etc.

[SteveP]

can't we just FWD all spam messages on the forum to Aymat's mailbox?!

Like your style

[volvodspec]

yeah well, i even noticed that once i saw spam-messages i'd went for the red cross at the top-right off the screen, and log in a while later to see if the mod's cleaned the forum so it was readable again.

i really can't see why it should take this long to do something about this annoying problem, it's rediculous really.

[jtbo]

That is not so big of problem for me, sure there are spam sometimes, but it is nothing like making board unreadable or anything like that, imo.

I think it like this, it is better to have board with flooded with spam than no board at all.

[volvodspec]

hmm, i've had a few times where there were in total about 30 or maybe even 40 spam messages in general discussion, technical discussion, photo comp, offer and calendar. if you tend to read up with the new posts on the forum evere few days like i allways try all that gets rather annoying

maybe i'm a bit spoiled too, there's 0,0001% spam on the V3C forum

[2 Fast 4 U]

maybe i'm a bit spoiled too, there's 0,0001% spam on the V3C forum

You can say that again.

[Chris_C]

There was here when we had custom bot defeating scripts The push to move over to PHPBB3 meant none of these were transferred, so we are a prime target.

[Chris_C]

Nicely done Andy_h, shame I had to delete that thread really

[andy_h]

no probs, they do that quite a bit on another forum but the forum members are much more twisted than me lol the spammers get owned

[antiekeradio]

In my experience (being admin of the V3C board), the 'silly question' method is integral part of the 'bulletproof spam wall'.

Another part is the software we use, buying an owned licence for vBulletin cost us (V3C) around 150 pounds, but even while I haven't done anything substantial to it in over 3 years, we still have a near-spamfree board.

Only action needed was to (slightly) alter the silly questions as soon as the first spam registrations started to show up.
In the old days (running a CGI/perl board software called Discus, which was quite Discus(ting) indeed!) new registrations were filtered through mod approval, which works well as long as you don't think too much about the mod workload.

After the initial transfer to vBulletin, I have experimented with combinations of the existing mod approval with out-of-the-box "protection mechanisms" like CAPTCHA, limited posting rights for newbies, etc, but only after I tried the silly questions all spam registrations stopped and mod approval became superfluous. With CAPTCHA (any implementation) quite a lot of spammers still got through. You know how that looks on the forums pages...

Due to developments in both image analysis software and mass-production sites where the codes are typed over by low-paid humans, CAPTCHA has become even more useless over time, and today I wouldn't advise anyone to use it for any purpose, unless you modify the parameters like the TTF fonts and result image size, character set of the guessword, etc to a quite heavy extent.
All of which makes human registration harder, too... Catch 22 is the same as silly questions, but more negative.

The main problem with the silly question idea is that it is language specific. On V3C both the questions and the required answers are in dutch. I have no doubt this is one of the prime reasons we have been spam-dry for so long with so little mod intervention.
It seems the challenge for Aymat is to find the right questions/answers that are specific enough to deter spammers with some English language skills, while still easy enough for interested human beings to answer correctly.

you could start a competition to think of these questions?

[2 Fast 4 U]

Just reported 4 spam posts 1 was al ready reported.

[volvodspec]

WTF Aymat, it's not funny any more

tbh, it's rediculous really..

is Aymat "active" on the french side of the forum? maybe all v3m - english section members should make a side account and spam om that forum...

[volvosneverdie]

WTF Aymat, it's not funny any more

tbh, it's rediculous really..

is Aymat "active" on the french side of the forum? maybe all v3m - english section members should make a side account and spam om that forum...

We seem to be getting very popular with the spammers (again).
I think its Foggyjames encouraging them by purchasing fake Nike Air Jordan baseball sneakers and Gucci manbags.

[Chris_C]

Sorry guys, I've been deleting 10 or so posts a day but was away over the weekend. Me, Foggy, Steve, Pete and Rupert are all meeting Aymat at the end of the month, I'll see what we can do and add some more defences.

[trabitom99]

Me, Foggy, Steve, Pete and Rupert are all meeting Aymat at the end of the month, I'll see what we can do and add some more defences.

Sounds like a good opportunity to get things sorted

Tom