Spam attack

[Uncle Liam]

What's the deal with this? Just seems to be overnight, at least in the UK. Seems to be only happening in this forum. 

Hope it's sorted soon. Another board I used to post on had to close down because of spam attacks.

[t8yman]

I suggested to Neil that he needs a mod to approve new accounts before they can post, but he didnt like the idea. Thats the only defense against it as far as I can see.

[lost]

What about one of those Turing tests where you have to type the letters you see when you sign up. Does the board software support anything like that?

just googled, they are called CAPTCHA

Edited February 24, 2016 by lost

[eFestivals]

32 minutes ago, lost said:

What about one of those Turing tests where you have to type the letters you see when you sign up. Does the board software support anything like that?

just googled, they are called CAPTCHA

yep, that's always been used.

[eFestivals]

48 minutes ago, t8yman said:

I suggested to Neil that he needs a mod to approve new accounts before they can post, but he didnt like the idea. Thats the only defense against it as far as I can see.

the problem with that method is that new users don't get instant access, and so are less likely to get involved. It's far from ideal, and the amount of spamming hasn't warranted it.

 

[eFestivals]

59 minutes ago, Uncle Liam said:

What's the deal with this? Just seems to be overnight, at least in the UK. Seems to be only happening in this forum. 

Hope it's sorted soon. Another board I used to post on had to close down because of spam attacks.

spammers come and go. Tonight was one of the worst spam attacks these forums have had. While there's been a bit of overnight spam recently it's not been as much as last night.

There's already  number of different anti-spam measures in place, but I'll take a look later to see what further measures can be made - I'm pretty sure there's at least one further thing I can do which will stop spam bots .... tho I have a feeling these might not be bots but real people (which are harder to stop).

It'll be sorted soon enough.

Edited February 24, 2016 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

I've just added an extra spambot protection layer to the registration system, which I hope will stop some of the spamming - tho only if done by spambots and not humans. It might take a few days to have full effect, because the spammers often register at day or three before they spam.

I've also blocked another IP address range - which will stop a little of it, tho not so much of what happened tonight.

And the individual IP address of each spammer is going to an anti spam service too (and has done for a number of years), which blocks a large amount here via the spam that gets posted of other services using the same anti-spam service.

Edited February 24, 2016 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

well, it looks like Chinese/Korean/whatever spammers have been stumped by the extra measures I took yesterday, as there was none of that overnight.

Fingers crossed it keeps that way.

[Uncle Liam]

Nice work 

[Spindles]

23 hours ago, eFestivals said:

well, it looks like Chinese/Korean/whatever spammers have been stumped by the extra measures I took yesterday, as there was none of that overnight.

Fingers crossed it keeps that way.

Clearly not, from this morning's crop.

My suggestion would be to throttle the time between which new threads can be posted by non admin/moderator members to 1 hour (in the same way as private messages are throttled to 1 minute).  It wouldn't stop multiple accounts, but would slow them down and make it more manageable I expect.

[eFestivals]

I'm just trying to find where that option is, if it exists (which I think it does).