spam bot

Post by **vickyg2003** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 6:55 am

I deleted over 30 posts from this bot last night, and it looks like a new bot registry for this one esmeealq5g7

Post by **The Robman** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 8:31 am

I blasted about 30 posts myself, I wonder what's behind it.

Post by **vickyg2003** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 9:25 am

I don't know where these guys are coming from but it looks like you did battle with it under this name ( janfl7yw6) yesterday when the board was unavailable. It looks to be very automated, going for +8 hours every 5 to 9 minutes. What a pain!

Post by **The Robman** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 12:56 pm

I started blasting them the old fashioned way, then I just went to the database and deleted all of the most recent posts via SQL.

Post by **vickyg2003** » Wed Oct 05, 2011 12:45 pm

It looks like the Bot is back. I'll bet nancyw914 is going to fill the forum with garbage.

Post by **The Robman** » Wed Oct 05, 2011 1:06 pm

thanks for the heads-up, I just deleted that account.

Post by **The Robman** » Wed Oct 05, 2011 5:14 pm

I just blasted esmeealq5g7 and igwecj6ja2 before they could cause any trouble, and firman for having a spam link.

Post by **vickyg2003** » Wed Oct 05, 2011 5:41 pm

The Robman wrote:I just blasted esmeealq5g7 and igwecj6ja2 before they could cause any trouble, and firman for having a spam link.

Yes I had wondered why esmeealq5g7 and igwecj6ja2 were still here. I know they had both been reported for spam earlier.

Post by **The Robman** » Thu Oct 06, 2011 7:37 am

they must have got added back

Post by **vickyg2003** » Sat Oct 08, 2011 6:40 am

jeaneja1h is are latest bot.

I goofed when I started deleteing its posts, because one of the posts that I deleted looked like a binary file, instead of an human interaction. It was too early in the morning for me to be thinking right.

I was wondering if they can put binary into the database that gives them information to do the hack of the website.

I noticed that this bot was suspiciously absent while the site was thoroughly hacked. Don't know if it was just that you were around so much, and blew them away, or if they are linked to the major hack.

Post by **vickyg2003** » Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:27 am

lauraqt82 seems to be the bot,

You might want to blast sandy and cheapmoversfldd too.

Post by **The Robman** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 9:46 am

I think I've finally figured out how to beat the spambots. I changed the settings a while back so that all new users need to be approved by an admin before they can post, and I found that I was deleting 4 or 5 accounts every day that were obviously spambot accounts. So, next I changed the VIP code that you need to use to join, but it was still a 4 digit number that was visible on the screen, and the spambots kept trying to join. Then I changed it to something that you would need to know, like the name of the US president, and that seemed to hold them back for a while. Then after a few days I'd get some more spambot requests, which leads me to believe that they were waiting for a person to manually check what the new VIP code is and enter it into the spambot software, so what I've been doing is, as soon as I get a spambot request, I change the VIP code and they seems to hold them back for a few more days.

But regardless, as long as new accounts need admin approval, the obvious spambots won't get through. Of course, if the accounts look like normal accounts, they'll still get by me but we'll get them as soon as they start spamming.

Post by **The Robman** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 1:56 pm

The number of spam accounts have drastically reduced, so I have just changed the setting back so that users can approve their own application to join the forum again.

Let's keep an eye on this and if it starts getting out of hand again, I'll switch it back.

Barf · Post by **Barf** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 5:17 am

Here someone in his post #1 responds to an almost two years old thread by recommending a commercial software.

Post by **The Robman** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 6:39 am

I just deleted that post and the account before reading this post. Unfortunately, that one would have got through even with the admin approval step because there was nothing on the account itself to indicate a spammer.