spam damned spam

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DrSpooky
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Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2003 7:31 pm
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spam damned spam

Post by DrSpooky »

Overnight, we got hit harder than we have previously with spam user accounts and bogus posts. Spooky spotted it first thing this morning and worked to remove them and we think all of them are gone now. One of the posts linked to a website with a virus on the page. So if you are a Windows user, please update and run your virus scanner if you visited the page.

Spooky and I have been having discussions about these spam users. We had every account protection on except one -- admin must approve all new accounts. Spooky didn't want to do it since it would slow getting a new account especially if you did it and we were out of town. On the other hand, there were new spam accounts at least 3-5 times a week. This pushed things too far and now that feature is enabled.

No one automatically gets an account now -- she or I will have to approve it first.

I had a similar problem with site I run for the open source software package I maintain. We got to the point where I had 50 spam posts to the Wiki overnight and I had to find a wiki spam blocker. It really grinds my gears to have to waste time and effort dealing with this. :(

I appreciate all the users who report bogus posts and users. Please continue to keep an eye out. It takes vigilance. Hopefully we have made it a bit harder for the future.
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Otis Westinghouse
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Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Well done, it's clearly a massive bumpain, but it's a great job you're doing.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
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DrSpooky
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Post by DrSpooky »

Otis Westinghouse wrote:Well done, it's clearly a massive bumpain, but it's a great job you're doing.
Not as much of a pain as we hoped. The option only meant we got email when an account was created. The account still exists and you can still the user as the newest user. :(

I just added one more very nerdy hurdle which is invisible to people manually creating new accounts. Hopefully that will help some.

There were more suggestions from other board maintainers so we have more options. I just want to try them one at a time.
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