SPAM on Forums?

I'm sure you all know, we've seen a spike in the amount of SPAM on our forums. To combat this, we've just added some new SPAM checks. Even if it's a human and not a BOT trying to SPAM our forums, our new system should stop it.

woo woo

Ouch, yeah I can't use any links at all either. Gonna have to fix that. 

oh thats a good idea. after like 100 posts or something around there you can post links.

by the way will this block them in email notifications? because i saw your test link to google in my email but it was deleted on the forums.

Edited by maxyme - 29 Jun 2011 at 3:06pm

Would it be possible to also block new users from having links in their signatures? I've still seen a few spam posts with advertisement links in their signatures.

Also has anyone else been having issues with the forums logging them out constantly lately? I of course have it set to keep me logged in but it keeps logging me out anyway all the darn time. It logs me out while I'm in the middle of posts, meaning I lose everything I've written if I click post without copying it to my clipboard first, if I haven't checked the board in awhile it logs me out 2 seconds after I refresh the board to see new posts, and it just plain logs me out randomly multiple times throughout the day.

Most irritating is that when it logs me out and I log back in it sets my "last visit" time to right then, effectively marking every post as read, making it a real pain to fish through figuring out where there are actually new posts or not. (Yes the Active Topics link at the top helps, but is still bothersome to use.)

Dragoon, I have never been log out using Opera.

The system should not let first time posters post a link but a hundred post is way too much. More like 20 would be better. Links are important to convey information about a question. You don't want to limit the information flow.

Frank

Originally posted by JimA Trying to submit my first post after receiving my new ODE 3 and I keep getting the error that I can't include links in my post even though I am not including any that I am aware of.

Maybe you're copy/pasting something with a link?

Try now.

I have the same issue as JimA.

Edited by sjeffrey - 08 Dec 2011 at 12:22am

A couple issues with these bots. First off, I thought they couldn't post links on new accounts. But in this thread the user aminee was able to post a link in their very first post on the forums. I don't know if that user is a bot, they edited their post so I'm guessing not, but they made the same post twice in two different threads.

Second issue would be increasing the security in creating an account. There are plenty of bots that can get past various captcha codes so maybe the one used during registration could be switched to one that is a little tougher.

From what I understand about captcha codes from previously being a forum mod on a mmo website is that the people who make the bots research how the different types of captcha codes work. The bots can then recognize which captcha program is being used and take the action it needs to bypass it.

There are some captchas that are so weak the just entering the first letter correctly will allow the entry to pass. The site I was a mod for changed the captcha it used like four different times in the almost year that I was moding in order to help fight bots.

Lastly, can we get the Report Post option changed. Normally on most forums there is an obvious button to click to report a post but on the DS forums you have to go into the Post Options in order to find Report Post. You could potentially increase the feed back from legit users to inform you guys of spam posts by giving people an easier and more obvious way to report stuff.

Also regarding reporting posts, can the system be changed to take you back to the previous page you were on when you reported it and not back to the forum home page?


Edited by jmaster299 - 21 Dec 2011 at 1:02am

Hey Alex while you are at it, can you tell the forum that I'm not a spammer, it keeps telling me:

Originally posted by DST4ME Hey Alex while you are at it, can you tell the forum that I'm not a spammer, it keeps telling me:

:P i think the timeout should be shortened though, because i get that all the time when replying to threads all at once.

Good one Tidgxor.

Frank

I let the team know, we reduced the time between posts to not flag the SPAM warning. We'll look into how we can save the post as well.