Forum spam - Need report box

[TJF1960]

Wow, I am gone from the forum for a day and a half and all hell broke loose....I wish I had as much free time on my hands as some of these spammers seem too!!! I ended up just marking the whole forum as read...no way i could sift thru it all.

I too will offer any help I can to put an end to this madness!

 

Tim

[Brian H]

I am one of the assistants on the X10 forums with some extra powers.

I joined Tuicemen's {X10 Administrator and knows me} Forum. I had the same very limited ability what I could post until my status was upgraded to a higher level by the number of posts I made.

I also know all new members get their users name and IP information compared in a list to a known spammers. Before even getting the email step to membership.

 

Though a balance has to be made. He was using so many different spam detectors new users never got the email and he was adding users manually.

 

For now. I am also doing a short search for what maybe a real question for assistance and then marking the whole forum as marked. If I miss something it can't be helped. As the spam is getting here quicker than I can read new messages.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hello everyone,

 

I am so very sorry ... this is just inexcusable. To Brian's point, perhaps we should have a question that only ISY users would know the answer to. Please note that these are regular human beings with nothing on their hands.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[Brian H]

Very discouraging to know someone is actually paid to post this garbage.

Maybe they get paid by the number of posts they make.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi BrianH,

 

I must say that discouraging is an understatement ... It's quite depressing. I had the same problem with my Windows 8.1/Office 2013 and I had to manually delete 1000s of spam email every day. Apparently Outlook's junk options cannot handle these new spams. I finally had enough and purchased SpamFighter and couldn't be happier. It catches 99% of the spam. I think the trick is that they have an online database which gets updated every time a user blocks an email. This way, all benefit.

 

So, in the same vein, I think there should be the same service for the forums since, in all likelihood, the spammers use the same email/username across forums. Kind of like a distributed online forum spam database and I would pay for such as service with pleasure.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[larryllix]

It appeared a few hundred different accounts were opened to accomplish this mess.

 

If all new accounts were verified to a registered email account, was there a few hundred different email addresses that were verified or were there multiple accounts verified to the same email address?

 

Could that may be a method to eliminate multiple accounts to the same email address verified, without special permission?

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi larryllix,

 

These were all regular email accounts and they actually activated the account by email.

 

Very very disturbing.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[Michel Kohanim]

And, all are from (in the order of #s):

Ukraine

China

Russia

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[Brian H]

I see they managed to get in again.

In fact one was logged in when I got here and was a very busy pain where I sit.

[dstanley]

Maybe a UUID attached to the users account should be required to allow posting?

Otherwise new accounts could be limited to reading only with maybe one forum topic for open posting for them to ask questions.

Maybe see how something like that worked?

[Teken]

I believe if a UUID is used to allow write permissions that might hinder those who have valid pre purchase questions.

 

Then again maybe those questions should be directed to sales via a link etc.

 

Right now anyone can view the vast amount of information just by viewing the UDI forums.

 

So maybe using the UUID to allow write permissions may be a good solution after all.

 

Teken . . .

 

 

Encrypted By: Phoenix Security Solutions

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi Guys,

 

Thanks so very much for all the feedback.

 

I was busy killing them this morning ... we now have a few from Indonesia and Sweden!

 

We are working on possibly migration to IP.Board as it seems to have pretty good spam fighting modules (one of which is server based).

 

Any other recommendations?

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[G W]

Michel, please take a look at Vanilla Forums. It's one of the best I have seen.

 

Sent from my SM-N900P using Tapatalk

[MWareman]

Heard good things about IP.Board, but please please keep integration with Tapatalk...

 

You could also put the forum behind Cloudflare, who are able to add a reputation header to the http requests. You can then use that header to block posting from IPs that Cloudflare have detected are abusers - and their reach is enormous.

 

I'm successfully protecting a WordPress blog with this method, and it works well. Add Akismet for additional protection, to both the post and sign up pages.

[Jimbo.Automates]

I have to chime in with a +1 to support tapatalk if a new forum is chosen.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[G W]

Vanilla supports Tapatalk.

 

Sent from my SM-N900P using Tapatalk

[Mark H]

IP.Board works with Tapatalk as well.