Thanks for taking care of this, @jrap. That was a little too much excitement this early in the morning...

 

Tsunami contained. Can I go back to sleep now?

 

We have Google Captcha, a 'hidden' captcha, honeypots, ban specific email domains, and ping out to 2 different spam services to check username/email/IP. It's unfortunately always going to be an ongoing battle.

I agree with the suggestion of limiting the number of threads or replies a new member can make. That's a great idea.

Wow, thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of the varied defensive measures taken by the site. Great!

 

Tsunami contained. Can I go back to sleep now?

You done good. Thank you!

 

It is good to see things are under control.

I would also welcome a 24- or 48-hour timeout between new user registration and when the new user is allowed to post anything.

Not something to increase the enthusiasm of anyone having just completed registration. Happened to me when starting to investigate, in an ad hoc forum, a subject related to mechanics .

I escaped.

I escape from forums where so many rules / caveats / points / qualifications / badges / perusal of your previous history and God knows what else, is required.

There is a forum where the old members, volunteer patrolmen (too eager to fire from the heap), qualify your post , writing detailed meticulous, wise and thoughtful considerations to impede receiving any response. Tried it once. Not a second one for me; gracias.

If the aftermath of our bloody awakening makes you feel that I am endorsing spam, read again. And do not worry, no matter what old date my profile displays, I am a still half cooked rookie. Georg Simon's law you ask? Almost there...

 

Wow, thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of the varied defensive measures taken by the site. Great!

But didn't placing this in public view just give them more things to work with? To find ways to get around the safe guards? Not a coder so that's why I'm asking.

 

I would also welcome a 24- or 48-hour timeout between new user registration and when the new user is allowed to post anything. That would pretty much eliminate attacks like this one, in which the spammer is repeatedly registering new user names to post his garbage from.

I don't think this is a good idea -- most members (that post anything, since most members actually never post to the forums ever) that join do so because they have an issue they want to address and they want to address it now. That's what they are searching for and that's how they ended up here in the first place. If we make them wait at all, then many of them will just continue on their way elsewhere.

But limiting the number of posts a new member can make is an idea worth serious consideration. It can't be too tight because many new members -- particularly the ones we want to keep -- will post a question in Homework Help and then quickly become actively involved in the back-and-forth discussion of their efforts. But limiting them to ten posts a day might work well. Even ten posts in the last hour or perhaps ten minutes between successive posts would work. That last forum I was a mod on simply required a one-minute wait between successive posts (for all members) and this was quite effective at limiting spam barrages -- and that site is FAR more active than AAC. IIRC the admin set up a script that detected anytime a member attempted to violate that waiting period more than three times in one day and it almost always reported spambots and not legitimate members. I would occasionally violate the rule but it was a simple matter of waiting a bit and hitting Post again and then I was naturally more careful to slow the pace for a while.

 

If the aftermath of our bloody awakening makes you feel that I am endorsing spam, read again.

Don't worry, I know very well that you're not endorsing spam. No matter what steps AAC takes to mitigate problems like this, it's going to step on somebody's toes; the trick will be in minimizing the pain.

After thinking a bit, I think I like the idea of limiting the number of threads a newcomer can create to 2 or 3 in his first 24 hours the best. Maximum benefit, minimum intrusiveness.

 

But limiting the number of posts a new member can make is an idea worth serious consideration. It can't be too tight because many new members -- particularly the ones we want to keep -- will post a question in Homework Help and then quickly become actively involved in the back-and-forth discussion of their efforts.

I'm not in favor of limiting the number of posts a newcomer can make-- just the number of new threads he can start.

 

But didn't placing this in public view just give them more things to work with? To find ways to get around the safe guards? Not a coder so that's why I'm asking.

The spammers that this would apply to already know all the standard tricks and assume that every site they attack is using all of them and more.

 

I'm not in favor of limiting the number of posts a newcomer can make-- just the number of new threads he can start.

The problem here is that a lot of the spam that gets posted are not new threads, but responses to existing threads, often quoting one of the earlier posts in the thread to make it appear more legitimate to the monitoring software.

 

Then the script kiddies will create a new user every three posts.

Obviously, it's too easy to register. Need to add Captcha as a requirement.

As already noted, there IS a CAPTCHA requirement. Spam software is getting better and better at automatically detecting and responding to these kinds of challenges. Plus, there's an old standby that works really well -- the spammer uses a service to get the response and that service does nothing more than host a porn site and uses the submitted CAPTCHA to allow someone to download a porn image and then just submits the response back to the subscribing spammer. Works great and in real time.

 

responses to existing threads, often quoting one of the earlier posts in the thread to make it appear more legitimate

I catch those often enough that I'm sure you noticed me Reporting that kind of activity.
As always, I report 'em, you decide what to do with them.
My reports are in no way a demand that guess what I want and bend to my will.
They are just Reports. What you do with them is exclusively your job.
None of my business.
If I ever report one twice, it is merely a mistake.

 

Good thing I slept in this morning!

 

Good thing I slept in this morning!

You missed quite a show; it was spectacular, with a rising tide of Chinese spam that at one point was 8 or 9 screens long.

Very distressful, until the posse showed up and saved the day!

 

I catch those often enough that I'm sure you noticed me Reporting that kind of activity.
As always, I report 'em, you decide what to do with them.
My reports are in no way a demand that guess what I want and bend to my will.
They are just Reports. What you do with them is exclusively your job.
None of my business.
If I ever report one twice, it is merely a mistake.

We rely very heavily on those reports -- so keep them coming!

 

​

You missed quite a show; it was spectacular, with a rising tide of Chinese spam that at one point was 8 or 9 screens long.

Very distressful, until the posse showed up and saved the day!

My conversation with a noob was deleted though.

 

they're back

 

Oh, goodie... here we go again! Numerous Chinese spam, from numerous user names...

 

maybe it's the north Koreans