Spam this morning

[Steve]

Hi folks,

This morning we had some spam on the forums that definitely crossed the line. If you were unfortunate enough to see it before it was deleted, please accept my apologies.

We have lots of anti-spam protections built into our forum here, but every now and then one slips through. In fact they've been slipping through more often these days as spammers get smarter and better at hiding their intentions. We install the latest anti-spam patch, and a few weeks later we seem to attract smarter spammers. :(

The spam this morning was way over the line of what's acceptable here, and it has brought me to the realization that extreme countermeasures are needed. So tonight we will be installing a new anti-spam system that amounts to a nuclear bomb for spammers. At the moment, it seems to be the only system that the spammers can't get around. I expect someday they will, but hopefully we'll delay that long enough to find the next thing that works.

The down side is that the new system is somewhat more agressive than what we've used in the past. I hope that no one is affected by it, but if you try to access the forum and get an error message, just copy the message and forward it to webmaster@loghomebuilders.org and we'll fix it as soon as possible.

One of the issues that might come up is that the new script checks user-agents from your browser when you access the forums. Some "web privacy filters" block this information, so if you run a web privacy filter you might need to turn that feature off to access the forums. Most folks shouldn't have a problem with this, and if you don't know what I'm talking about then you are probably safe.

We have other tricks on the way as well. I just wanted to announce this one as soon as possible to make sure everyone knows what to do if they encounter an error when trying to access the forums.

-Steve

[Steve Doocy]

Thanks Steve for staying on top of any problems and keeping everything working properly inspite of the outside ding dongs.

Thanks

Steve Doocy
The Video Guy from LA.

[jeffro]

Missed that one, but have noticed the increase.

One thing we did on our website was to change the name from ...com/forums to ....com/somethingelseforums That way the script robot searches can't find your forum location because it does not match the name it is looking for. Won't stop actual people, but we have not had to do anything else since we did that step.

Thanks for the continual work on the site.

Jeff

[mhiles]

I miss all the good scat posts from .cn domains

DRAT!

:lol:

[Steve]

Okey doke, patch is installed. If you can't read this then let me know. ;)

[nobleknight]

01-18-07

I was suspicious last night, when I saw the newest member was 'freemovies'. Sure enough this morning I could not believe what I saw. It is unbelievable how people do this. Sometimes my own child watches the 'log house people'. I'm glad this was not one of those times.

I'm sure, if you spam them in return, they would be furious.

Tom
nobleknight
class 01-15-05

[mhiles]

I think there's a heavy-duty PHPBB bot that's running these days because a couple of other PHPBB -based communities that I frequent have been hammered with the video spammer.

[kyle]

My internet leads site has been getting hit hard for the past couple days. I never had a problem before that.

[Steve]

As expected, our stricter anti-spam system has attracted a new batch of smarter spammers. So today we did a few upgrades and new installs of anti-spam software for the forums. Here's a summary:

First, we updated the previous (nuke approach) system to the latest version. That's a no-brainer, it's always good to keep up with new versions as they become available.

Next, we installed a new system that flags posts and puts them in a moderation queue if they appear to be spam. This could affect you in the event that you submit a post that contains suspicious words. If your post goes to a moderation queue, it will not show up in the forum (it will look like the post just disappeared) until a moderator approves it. No need to panic or re-submit the post 20 times, just send an e-mail to webmaster and we'll fix it right away. ;)

The new moderation system only applies to new user accounts. After a user makes a certain number of posts, the moderation system automatically approves all of that user's posts. I won't say what the number of posts is, but it's fairly low. Spammers usually just create an account and make a single post before we delete their accounts.

Finally, we're experimenting with a commercial spam filtration service called Akismet. This is an online service that looks at a post as it is submitted and gives a yes/no opinion on whether it is spam. If Akismet says a post is spam, the post automatically goes into the moderation queue. This is experimental, and it may cause the performance of our forums to degrade during peak internet traffic times. We'll have to evaluate the results and decide in a few weeks if it will work out for us in the long run.

So as of today, we seem to be completely caught up with the state-of-the-art in spam detection and prevention. Keep your fingers crossed. :)

-Steve

[ponyboy]

Does this mean that my order for the Britney Spears tape will not go through..... :shock: :roll: Dang!

( Good thing I got my bid in early on Ebay for a bag of her hair!)

[nobleknight]

Looks like the new patch caught one. I noticed a post this morning. I clicked and it does not show up as a new post. 'somozasayre' I hope this works. It may have dropped into the moderation queue. Maybe they will move along and leave us alone.

Tom
nobleknight
class 01-15-05

[Shark]

Looks like the new patch caught one. I noticed a post this morning. I clicked and it does not show up as a new post. 'somozasayre' I hope this works. It may have dropped into the moderation queue. Maybe they will move along and leave us alone.

Tom
nobleknight
class 01-15-05

I noticed that too, seems those spammers are getting everywhere.

Good job on stopping them though!