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De facto spam filter?

Chuck(G)

Chuck(G)

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Jan 11, 2007
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Location
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I note that a couple of phpBBS forums have resorted to dodging spam posters by insisting that, upon signing up, that new registrants be required to give some information about themselves before being allowed to post.

I see almost no spam on these boards nowadays, so it must work.

What do you think?
 
Of all the forums I read there's only a single one where I have never seen a single spam post ever, and that's also the only forum I visit where the first post is automatically queued for moderation. From having moderated forums in the past myself (and currently actively moderating one) it is usually possible to detect spammers by their first post with 99% confidence, even if they're now trying to "fit in" more and more (sometimes by copying old posts). At least for forums with a theme that requires a minimum of knowledge.
Anyway, one change is that now the majority of spam seems to not be spambots anymore, but fellows from poor countries being paid to sit in an internet cafe somewhere (well, I'm just guessing at the location) all day long and manually post spam.

-Tor
 
I know part of the problem at least here is I think this forum does have some logic when signing up doesn't it? (a human question upon registering?). I thought here it's because humans sign up then spam or are paid to sign up and spam. If not then yes your registration page can be scripted and first post usually as well by spam bots.
 
I'm a moderator on CPU-World forum and spammers there have changed their approach
The owner of the site included his own scripts so upfront spamming deletes the user & spam posts automatically

now they are making simple posts on threads with no spam and then coming back in a few weeks and adding the spam
 
Actually yeah, that's the biggest one I see here. A random post sometimes copied from another post in the thread or a random sentence generated or sometimes actually typed by a person it seems then later they edit with a spam signature or spam url in the post. I'm not an admin here but I think there's a limit of at least 5 posts before folks can post pictures in a post now. I don't think they did that with urls though although sometimes legit folks come in and could link to their problem elsewhere which is nice.

I do sorta like the first x posts by a member being moderated although it might be frustrating to new users too. All in all though the spam here isn't very bad compared to what I've seen elsewhere. Kudos to the mods for their quick actions <beer clink>cheers</beer clink>
 
Another option is to check against the Stop Forum Spam database. vB plug-ins exist to automate this on the signup form. Yet another option is to manually ban offending IPs and ranges from even registering, something that would be quite effective here since this forum seem to get hit by the same group of spammers week after week.
 
Akismet is without question the all around best web spam fighter there is but, unfortunately, it's linked to WordPress and that's not what we're using, here. I used to spend way too much time moderating spam garbage and I had been using lots of other products (including all the recommendations of njroadfan in the above post). The day I started using Akismet it all dried up. It seems to be 100% effective. I know that sounds too good to be true but that's been my observation.
 
I put in a question that the registrant has to answer. At first it worked, but with a question like "a violin has .... strings" it became apparent that a bot might be doing a dictionary attack. However, I discovered that one can ask a question that is harder and that someone not familiar with the forum subject, or from another culture, would not easily answer. "A bodhrán is a kind of" seems to be a good one which any traditional music fan can answer in their sleep, but (so far) seems to be impossible for Bangladesh spammers.
 
When people apply for membership to use the NZ Vintage Computer Forums I normally send them a quick email back (I keep the text handy) saying I've had problems with spammers in the past and that I just want to run a check to see if (1) They are human and (2) They are not going to spam the site with linked signatures or advertisements. I ask them to write a few lines as to their interest in the New Zealand board and vintage computers in general.

This tends to weed them out. I figure if they have a genuine desire to be part of an on-line community they will go the extra step.

Sometimes if the email they have provided is a .co.nz one I don't bother but if it's a .gmail.com or hotmail.com one I certainly do.

Tez
 
tezza said:
Sometimes if the email they have provided is a .co.nz one I don't bother but if it's a .gmail.com or hotmail.com one I certainly do.
Click to expand...

Filtering out hotmail, gmail, and yahoo, would solve almost all problems. Those are the real source of the problem, and I always wonder why somebody would use them unless they just don't have a clue about e-mail. Of course many people don't, but if they couldn't send mail, they'd probably figure it out soon enough.
 
Ole Juul said:
Filtering out hotmail, gmail, and yahoo, would solve almost all problems. Those are the real source of the problem, and I always wonder why somebody would use them unless they just don't have a clue about e-mail. Of course many people don't, but if they couldn't send mail, they'd probably figure it out soon enough.
Click to expand...

Well, I use GMail. I also like to think I have a clue about email. The great thing about using a free-standing email service is that you can keep your email address even when you change ISP's.
So please, don't be too quick with your filtering based on email providers.
 
tingo said:
Well, I use GMail. I also like to think I have a clue about email. The great thing about using a free-standing email service is that you can keep your email address even when you change ISP's.
So please, don't be too quick with your filtering based on email providers.
Click to expand...
FWIW, Gmail is one of the most used servers to SEND spam!!!
 
Right but it's not really a problem with the service of having a free non-isp specific email server, it's still a problem with the contents and users abusing the system. For it's users gmail is actually doing quite a nice job of filtering spam out. So has Yahoo lately. I'm on those because I didn't have an ISP that came with an email account at the time and prior to that I used AOL (was a business need for the family vs a choice we made but we had free accounts from it). I've seen interesting sites and forums though that reject any email address if it's a free email provider which I found less convenient. For myself I use the free email folks just because I have for all these years and if I don't like my ISP I don't lose my email account that folks already know.
 
Yes, GMail definately does a good job of filtering spam for its users. But so does my ISP and all my other mail services as of late. :)

I have a domain and get most of my email there so I don't have to be concerned about changing my ISP either.
 
tingo said:
Well, I use GMail. I also like to think I have a clue about email. The great thing about using a free-standing email service is that you can keep your email address even when you change ISP's.
So please, don't be too quick with your filtering based on email providers.
Click to expand...

Don't worry. I know many people like you who know plenty about e-mail, and I can't ignore that. :) If for no reason than out of respect.

Yes, the ability to keep your e-mail address when you change ISP is very important. However, the problem with the aforementioned services is that they are free. Because of that they are used by spammers, and I for one don't support the use of e-mail servers for that purpose. In my experience, more than nine out of ten e-mail and forum spams come from those services. Using them is a tacit endorsement of spamming. In my opinion it would therefore be a good idea to not use them - at least in their present form. One can either buy a domain name, and/or use paid for e-mail services, which can be very good too.

The bottom line for me is that GMail does NOT filter spam from my point of view. Perhaps they filter it for their own user's inboxes, but that is useless to the rest of the world. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Google is being irresponsible in the way they operate their mail servers. And that is the "clue about e-mail" that I'm talking about - not technical understanding. :)
 
Ole Juul said:
...I would go so far as to say that Google is being irresponsible in the way they operate their mail servers...
Click to expand...
Now, there's an understatement. I don't know whether they're more irresponsible or more incompetent but either way they're not doing what they need to.
 
Have you found the spam to really be from googles servers or gmail accounts or just being spoofed? Most of the spam engines out there randomize the sender, it's up to the ISP of course to correctly configure their mail server not to allow external mail relay from IPs not in the company range. That *used* to be a big issue with the free services since the public IP is what would create the email and just say it was @thathost email address and it didn't know any better.

I dunno though. If email went to a pay service I'd likely just drop it.
 
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