The Spammers have Won
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Due to the glut of "profile spam", bios are no longer avaiable.
There's no technological means I can see of stopping them as it's real people creating the profiles.
I hate spammers. We need more brutal murders of spammers.
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Meh. I never used them anyway. Not a big loss, but for the principle of the thing. This won't be a problem once I perfect my "punch-someone-in-the-face-over-the-internet" system. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to fit my fist into an IP packet.
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Ooooo do keep us informed on the developed of this FOIP technology. I think there's a lot of potential for it.
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
Fist-Over-IP technology. I think there's a lot of potential for it.
That's a porn reference, right?
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
[Bios Not Available until further notice. The spammers have won.]
How will I boot my computer before you re-enable my BIOS? I better make sure not to shut it down. Good thing I run Vista.
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Nooo! What will tster do?
@bstorer said:
Right now I'm trying to figure out how to fit my fist into an IP packet.
Try IPv6 with [url=http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2675]jumbograms[/url].
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
Due to the glut of "profile spam", bios are no longer avaiable.
There's no technological means I can see of stopping them as it's real people creating the profiles.
I hate spammers. We need more brutal murders of spammers.
what is "profile spam?"
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@Spectre said:
I though IPv6 automatically punched you in the face from time to time. How would anyone even know the difference?Nooo! What will tster do?
@bstorer said:
Right now I'm trying to figure out how to fit my fist into an IP packet.
Try IPv6 with jumbograms.
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Ban the word "shoes" while you're at it. I'm sure we can all find a work-around if needed.
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@tster said:
what is "profile spam?"
Create an Account, set the Bio/Profile to say "Buy Viagra" or whatever, Spam a bunch of blogs/people with links to Profile page.
It's rediculous. They were creating like 50 accounts a night. It takes all of 5 minutes to delete with a script, but you still have to figure out which ones are real, etc.
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Are they giving real email addresses when they sign up? Perhaps you can ban those email addresses. Then to create accounts they have to create new email addresses too.
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@tster said:
Are they giving real email addresses when they sign up? Perhaps you can ban those email addresses. Then to create accounts they have to create new email addresses too.
Yup. They create hundreds of accounts at gmail, ymail, etc, and then use those to verify emails. They take advantage of the "dot" policy as well, so you'll see signups from abcde.f@gmail.com, abcd.e.f@gmail.com, abc.d.e.f@gmail.com, etc.
To combat this, some forums set rules like "only show bio after 5 posts", so they create the accounts, post "wow, good point" and stuff, then spam the profile. The only way to win is to verify each and every account, and that's just too much of a PITA. Plus, I'm sure they'll find a way around that, too
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
The only way to win is to verify each and every account, and that's just too much of a PITA.
Wouldn't that fall into the job description of moderators? Perhaps create moderators that only have the power to mark accounts as spam, and charge lots of people with that power? Or perhaps you could implement a user voting system like craigslist? (I think that posts get marked as spam after 5 people have flagged it as such). If its a PITA to look at every account then distributing the process should minimize the individual pain.
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@OzPeter said:
@Alex Papadimoulis said:
The only way to win is to verify each and every account, and that's just too much of a PITA.
Wouldn't that fall into the job description of moderators? Perhaps create moderators that only have the power to mark accounts as spam, and charge lots of people with that power? Or perhaps you could implement a user voting system like craigslist? (I think that posts get marked as spam after 5 people have flagged it as such). If its a PITA to look at every account then distributing the process should minimize the individual pain.You're asking for features from CommunityServer? Are you insane?
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
They take advantage of the "dot" policy as well, so you'll see signups from abcde.f@gmail.com, abcd.e.f@gmail.com, abc.d.e.f@gmail.com, etc.
Why not make the bans take the "." and "+" feature of gmail into acount?
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@tster said:
Why not make the bans take the "." and "+" feature of gmail into acount?
I'm going to answer that question with another question....
@bstorer said:
You're asking for features from CommunityServer? Are you insane?
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
@tster said:
Why not make the bans take the "." and "+" feature of gmail into acount?
I'm going to answer that question with another question....
@bstorer said:
You're asking for features from CommunityServer? Are you insane?
I thought you wrote the login and sign up part of the site.
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Too bad then that its not realistic to charge $1 per account. then you'd at least offset some server costs with it. would probably end it though.
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@galgorah said:
Too bad then that its not realistic to charge $1 per account. then you'd at least offset some server costs with it. would probably end it though.
I would gladly pay this.
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@belgariontheking said:
I thought adding features was verboten?@galgorah said:
Too bad then that its not realistic to charge $1 per account. then you'd at least offset some server costs with it. would probably end it though.
I would gladly pay this.
Though I too would be willing to be charged a nominal amount, I see problems with this approach.
'$1 to post to some web page?!eleventy112', is the most likely reaction/problem. Ignoring the fact that a not insubstantial number of users do not use $.
Do you charge existing accounts is another (I suspect the more frequent posters would anyway - a loyalty thing.)
Ebay, sorry, Paypal charges.
Per year/one off?
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@PJH said:
@belgariontheking said:
This may be a huge assumption, but I think you can set activation to "admin only" requiring a human to activate your account. I've been on a few BBSes like that. The admin waits until you wire a dollar to imrichbeyotch@thedailywtf.com via paypal before activating you.@galgorah said:
I thought adding features was verboten?Too bad then that its not realistic to charge $1 per account. then you'd at least offset some server costs with it. would probably end it though.
I would gladly pay this.Paypal probably has ways to wire money in one currency and have it be received in another, probably with a service charge.
It's horribly manual, but it gets around the "adding features to CS is a PITA" problem.
Alternatively, you can mail something to Alex ala the sticker contest to get an activation.
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@galgorah said:
Too bad then that its not realistic to charge $1 per account. then you'd at least offset some server costs with it. would probably end it though.
I don't remember what site it was, but one of the major online forums used paying a small amount to create an account as their means to make bans effective. They had a thriving community which continued to expand at a greater rate due to the better experience of their users since there were fewer spammers and trolls creating 20 accounts a day. However, I don't think this forum has that kind of inertia that these kind of steps are needed/wise.
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Another thing to note is that the spammers generally only post on a weekend. Its now Saturday morning USA east coast time and I can see a bunch of spam posts that appeared overnight that I would gladly take down if I could. One interesting thing is that at least one of spammers has realised that you can spam the tag cloud.
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@OzPeter said:
@Alex Papadimoulis said:
The only way to win is to verify each and every account, and that's just too much of a PITA.
Wouldn't that fall into the job description of moderators?Remember that moderators don't get paid. Because we like the forum, we fight the spam (as well as trolls etc.) but don't expect us to do lots of tedious work while we could do lots of tedious paid work.
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@ammoQ said:
Remember that moderators don't get paid. Because we like the forum, we fight the spam (as well as trolls etc.) but don't expect us to do lots of tedious work while we could do lots of tedious paid work.
I understand your desire to pursue paid work! But as has been discussed above it seems that a technological solution is out due to the various issues of CS. Thus about all that is left is some sort of moderation solution. So either you have paid moderation (to counter your tedious work :) ) or you increase the number of moderators so that the average time spent moderating per person becomes negligible. Or we just put up with the amount of spam that occurs.
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@OzPeter said:
o either you have paid moderation (to counter your tedious work :) ) or you increase the number of moderators so that the average time spent moderating per person becomes negligible.
I want there to be so many moderators that once spam is seen, the mods race to be the first to delete it. It'll be a badge of honor, and the rest of the mods and the unwashed masses will gamble on it and bstorer will be given the worst odds because he always wins. Then bstorer will bet against himself with a fake account and win all of our money just like Satan in that South Park episode, and that one manager for that one baseball team in the 80s.PESTO YOU'VE GOT IT IN FOR US ALL! I KNOW IT!
Before you start talking about it, I know it's Pete Rose and I'm an avid Reds fan.
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How do you know that the spammers are real people?
When I had the same problem with spam registrations on my boards, the problem was solved by adding captcha type questions to the registration page.
Though you've probably already thought of that...
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@PJH said:
One time fee sort of thing for the account reg. It encourages people to think before posting too. plus could help offset hosting costs.@belgariontheking said:
I thought adding features was verboten?@galgorah said:
Too bad then that its not realistic to charge $1 per account. then you'd at least offset some server costs with it. would probably end it though.
I would gladly pay this.
Though I too would be willing to be charged a nominal amount, I see problems with this approach.
'$1 to post to some web page?!eleventy112', is the most likely reaction/problem. Ignoring the fact that a not insubstantial number of users do not use $.
Do you charge existing accounts is another (I suspect the more frequent posters would anyway - a loyalty thing.)
Ebay, sorry, Paypal charges.
Per year/one off?
@tster: I know the forum your talking about. they charge a one time $10 fee for an account and there is no spam whatsoever.
