How to Get Rid of These Damned Spammers

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AlbertWhite
AlbertWhite Registered Users Posts: 10 ✭
in General Solar Power Topics #1
actually not sure if thats true, so nevermind
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  • niel
    niel Solar Expert Posts: 10,300 ✭✭✭✭
    #2
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    Re: How to Get Rid of These Damned Spammers

    you report them to us to get rid of.
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  • BB.
    BB. Super Moderators, Administrators Posts: 33,439 admin
    #3
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    Re: How to Get Rid of These Damned Spammers

    Niel, Windsun, and I probably get rid of ~95% of the spammers before they ever get a chance to post... The few that are seen by most people are those that get in when all three of us are out having a "real life".

    It is probably getting to the point where all first-time posters will need to be "Moderated" (first post needs to be approved by a real person--which will delay first time posters by hours or 1/2 a day). Generally, we try to welcome new-comers -- but the wild west nature of the internet means that the 95%'ers out there are going to hurt it for the 5% good people. :roll:

    Everyone out there is having very similar problems. The price of fame. And it will be up to our fearless admin/owner/host of this forum WindSun (& NAWS).

    Speaking for myself--Not for anyone else here. ;)

    -Bill
    Near San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset
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  • AlbertWhite
    AlbertWhite Registered Users Posts: 10 ✭
    #4
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    Re: How to Get Rid of These Damned Spammers

    well what I was saying is that those spammer bots can get through the captcha codes. the only way to tell if they are human is if you do a question and answer type thing instead. i didn't think I was right at first, but after looking more into it, it appears to work better then the image verification.
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  • BB.
    BB. Super Moderators, Administrators Posts: 33,439 admin
    #5
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    Re: How to Get Rid of These Damned Spammers

    We may also be seeing the "next level" up in the spam hierarchy...

    One person/group gets the registration... Passes on to the next group which either manual (meat/people) spams--or passes on to a botnet (silicon) for posting (botnet appears to be brand new to us).

    Certainly not my expertise--but I think that this is "new to us" over the last few days/week.

    -Bill
    Near San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset
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  • dwh
    dwh Solar Expert Posts: 1,341 ✭✭✭
    #6
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    Re: How to Get Rid of These Damned Spammers

    It's always been a "call and response" type of situation - and probably always will be.

    The Black Hats find a loophole, and the White Hats plug it. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

    Fortunately, most software devs do keep up with this stuff and patch as needed. But it's just the nature of the beast that they are always behind.

    Of course, it's also incumbent upon the administrator of the site to keep their system up to date...(he said as he notes that vBulletin 3.8.2 has been out since March 31st) o_O
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  • Windsun
    Windsun Solar Expert Posts: 1,164 ✭✭
    #7
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    Re: How to Get Rid of These Damned Spammers
    AlbertWhite wrote: »
    well what I was saying is that those spammer bots can get through the captcha codes. the only way to tell if they are human is if you do a question and answer type thing instead. i didn't think I was right at first, but after looking more into it, it appears to work better then the image verification.

    Tried the Q & A thing for a while, but what is happening now is that humans are doing the registrations and then feeding the login/PW to bots.
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  • boB
    boB Solar Expert Posts: 1,030 ✭✭✭✭
    #8
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    Re: How to Get Rid of These Damned Spammers
    AlbertWhite wrote: »
    well what I was saying is that those spammer bots can get through the captcha codes.

    Heck, I can't even read those things most of the time. I have to try many times usually before I get it right... at least lately that's been the case.

    boB
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