Spambots

[Skullboyq]

Hello, ive been noticing quite a change of the website recently with many Spambots promoting either a Website, Paid Hacks, Their own Bots (like that one Pokemon go bot guy) , Non english spam posts cointaining only one word or just Spam in general. 

Maybe you could add some stronger anti-spam measures or just a function to report non english posts or spam 

 

I really like this site and always go to the latest topics but since a month or so the latest topics are mostly Spam and 1 Game Request so i'd like to have this Website a bit more organized in that aspect.

 

I'd like to hear your side of things and your solutions to this problem

[Sysadmin]

Hello,

 

First off, I appreciate you taking the time to write this post and giving us the chance to respond.

 

Some of these are spambots, some are users posting incorrectly and others are users promoting their own websites. Here's how we currently handle each:

• Spambot: instant ban, no questions asked. All posts deleted.
• Incorrectly formatted/against rules post: Warn user, give them a chance to correct themselves. Further action warrants harsher action and deletion of posts.
• Self-promote: Message user, they can post content here, but not links to their own site. Further non-compliance results in points on their account, which can lead to long ban times.

- We have had an increase of spambots (many posts with stupid links, usually in a foreign language) the past few days. I've been handling those personally. I will be in touch with our moderating team, to show them what to do when such things happen.

- We had 1 self-promote user recently as well, who I contacted. That user said they'd stop, but continued. So, they received about 20 warning points (2-month ban essentially).

- Many users, however, do not format their posts correctly. That's an issue we've always had and probably will continue to have.

 

As for the 'report' function, we have disabled that recently. 85% of users were using the function incorrectly, which resulted in wasted moderator time. For now, VIP+ and above are able to report posts.

[Skullboyq]

Ah okay i understand how that can be abused and just a waste of time and i see that you are actively banning these people.

 

Just a minute ago i saw this Japanese/Korean guy promoting a website just spamming the site and after refreshing the page he was just gone so i see you are working on it which is great. 

 

My question was just is there a better way to defend yourself from these posts instead of relying on moderators to manually ban these people or is it near impossible?

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply anyways!

[Sysadmin]

Yes, I saw that user and instantly banned them after they posted.

 

Here's what I just did (in the past it was unstable, recent updates have fixed it):

• Users are now checked against StopForumSpam and ProjectHoneyPot. These are 2 huge databases of spammer IPs, email addresses, usernames, etc. That should help with users being able to register in the first place.
• Topics with non-English characters are now marked for review (moderators and admins can only see them). This will help the end user not to see spam.
• Other small under-the-hood spam enhancements.

We already had defenses in place, that stop the average spammer. The ones getting through are, as you can see, dedicated to the task. So advanced steps had to be taken. For the most part we don't have issue with spammers, but every once in a while we get a 'wave' of them.