Spambots

torbrex

Dear MSE towers

Filtering out certain words using the swear filter doesn't stop the black magic spambots from flooding the boards every day, they still post 50+ times on each visit and irritate the life out of anyone using that particular board or the general search function (New Posts)

A new tactic is needed please.

Limit Newbies to a certain number of posts on their first few days.

fermi

As much as I hate the spambots or whatever they are, I dislike more the idea of putting limits like that on new users.

I think it's important and part of the ethos that anyone can join and post freely - within rules.

Throttling the rate at which new threads can be posted for x number of hours or days after registering could help (though default vB throttle is new posts not threads I think so could require hack), but even that only requires a small adjustment of tactics to get around.

torbrex

Hey, I can live with them flooding the boards, in fact there has been another one at least this morning since I started this thread.

but

See it from a genuine Newbie's point of view when they post a genuine queary on a board then it gets lost for a couple of hours in a sea of that junk, that must be very offputting.

I suppose my main point got overlooked, the fact that censoring certain words does not stop the posts from hitting the board.

fermi

Not designed to stop posts hitting the boards.

It's designed to block some of the key words often used, which to some degree frustrates the objective of these bots, which is to get results higher up in search engines for their scam. That in turn may discourage the people running the bots from sending them here.

torbrex

But it doesnt :mad:

These posters don't go back and read anything that they have posted, its all about posting as many times as they can before they get taken down and banned.

I have always said that spammers can't read.

fermi

Sometimes they do. I've seen them go back and check sometimes so they are not always bots. Plus they will be checking independently to see where their spam terms are showing up most, so if that's not here, or less here, then that will get factored into which site they prioritise.

It's just one part of putting them off in the long run. Not a quick solution to stop them straight away.

[Deleted User]

Captchas for the first 50 posts.

Robin9

Limit 2 posts a day for Babies

Robin9

Yesterday Mr fdh...... was flooding the Credit Board with his Black Magic and he's here again this morning !

Robin9

.\\\\\\ joined by his mate Mr Shram.....

Piggywiggy

They're on here every morning, deleted by 7 though.