Whats with all the spambots lately?

[Odin]

Well?

[Bill3000]

No warped letters thingie that I saw a minute ago but am too lazy to check the link. It's quite common in other forums - Apolyton is probably like one of the few major forums that doesn't have it nowadays.

And ironically, I just saw a popup for "Free XBox 360!"

[Donegeal]

I have no idea what your talking about....

[Colonâ„¢]

They've been hired to bring back some life to OT.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by Colonâ„¢
They've been hired to bring back some life to OT.

This place has gone to the dogs over the last couple of months, hasn't it?

[Mao]

No no...that was me, I'm on Apolyton's payroll now, Colon. Now, if I wasn't such a slacker, I might actually do my job...

[Adagio]

I didn't do it...

[Kassiopeia]

The Internet's just getting bigger. Expect to get more and more of them if a measure to cull them at the registration stage isn't implemented - like the aforementioned warped letters.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

yep, warped letters are a must :|

[Ming]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
yep, warped letters are a must :|

Actually... the discussion just came up in the community forum, and Dan mentioned that it isn't needed at this time because the problem hasn't been too bad.

We maybe get 5 or so a week, which is really nothing.
I think the difference is that many are showing up during the US evening and early morning and only UR is around to catch them. He does a good job but he has to see them before he can act.

During the US day, we have better coverage, and we catch them much quicker.

It's very possible at some point that it might be needed, but right now, it really isn't. I see other forums getting hit much harder than Apolyton currently does.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
yep, warped letters are a must :|

I don't think we have actual 'bots (computer programs) on the loose. The spammers appear to be real humans operating from overseas (which explains the timing), probably on an outsourced contract.

[Ming]

Yep... now, most are showing up on your watch.

Plus, with the release of Civ IV, "some" of the other mods (like me) are not as attentive to Apolyton as maybe we should be.

[Krill]

yeah, we need to setup another Apolyton MP tourney...

[Thue]

I actually solved this problem completely at a forum I administer at my kollegium.

The trick is that the bots are just that, bots. So just changing the name of a post variable in the user registration code is enough to throw them off. Users will not see it, but bots will just go to the final page of the registration and try to submit a new user registration with the old, wrong post values.

Site-specific changes is the bane of automated spammers. Just creating a text on the registration page saying for example "write 2 in this text box to prove that you are not a bot" is much more effective than capchas, as the capcha code can be solved once and for all, but the spammers would have to use time on each site they want to spam to get past the site-specific changes.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Thue
Site-specific changes is the bane of automated spammers. Just creating a text on the registration page saying for example "write 2 in this text box to prove that you are not a bot" is much more effective than capchas, as the capcha code can be solved once and for all, but the spammers would have to use time on each site they want to spam to get past the site-specific changes.

Capcha can in theory be solved, though that will have to involve advanced machine vision. If a machine can read capcha it can probably read "write 2 in this text box to prove that you are not a bot" with slight modifications.