Three SPAM messages detected, moderator needed

Allanon · 20th December 2004, 12:39 PM

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showth...wpost&t=111139
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showth...wpost&t=111140
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=111138

Hope this helps.

Michael Morris · 20th December 2004, 12:43 PM

Dealt with.

**Darkness** · 20th December 2004, 01:44 PM

Did you kill the spammer?

Michael Morris · 20th December 2004, 10:19 PM

<--- Holds a bloodied banhammer behind his back and whistles innocently.

**Darkness** · 21st December 2004, 06:36 AM

W00t. Excellent!

Arcane Runes Press · 21st December 2004, 08:57 AM

Hi.

This is one of the mods from RPG.net (Patrick Y., the horned mod).

Anyway, we just got absolutely nailed twice today by some sort of autoregistering spambot that absolutely flooded our board. Easily 100 different posts in the space of 5 or so minutes.

It necroed old threads, and started a horde of new threads with the title OMG!!!

All the threads point to a message board called Xposed.org

I don't know if this was the same thing that got you, but you might want to watch out. Apparently, the spambot auto fills in the information required to become a registered poster.

Patrick Y.

Michael Morris · 21st December 2004, 09:13 AM

ENWorld uses GDI verification, which makes it all but impossible for bots to register a user name. That said, we do have vulnerabilities as well that the staff and I watch closely. This particular individual appeared to be a manual spammer (yes, such losers exist).

Allanon · 21st December 2004, 09:14 AM

Can't we run our own bot which bans anyone who posts more than 5 messages within 10 minutes of registering? Or who posts more than a message per minute (maybe exclude Crothian from this, wouldn't want to lose our no. 1 poster

)?

Michael Morris · 21st December 2004, 09:27 AM

These incidents pretty rare - average of once every two weeks, so I'm not too concerned about it. It's been discussed though, but P-kitty convinced me that most of the things we could do about the problem would do more harm in annoying new members who genuinely wish to participate in the forum than any good they could do in thwarting spammers. So, for now, we'll be banning and deleting spam as it pops up. If the policy changes, I'm sure Russ or Kevin will let it be known.