Page 1 of 1

Idea to help slow down spammers

Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2016 4:25 pm
by ComradeOj
Why spammers have chosen this site as a target, I don't know. But they have, and they're persistent.

I think a lot of spam could be prevented if another barrier to entry was added during registration. I know there is a question to be answered like "What's the name of Sonic's best friend ?:".

That question only has one correct answer. Spammers probably aren't having a hard time with it, with the possible exception of bots.

What if we changed the question. We could have them write a little something about the SEGA Genesis/MegaDrive. What they think of it, what games they like, when they first played it, etc. It doesn't have to be too long. We don't want to turn off legitimate users.

That kind of question has many different answers. I think it would be easier to catch spammers, since they would put little effort in to it, or just copy/paste the same thing every time.

Thoughts?

Re: Idea to help slow down spammers

Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2016 5:25 pm
by Sik
The problem is that registration is actually locked (i.e. needs admin approval) so those bots actually by-passed the registration form, at least that's what I'm gathering so far. So I think your solution would be useless.

As for why this site? They're like search engines, they just scan every site they can stumble upon and will try to spam everything. The thing is how effective can you be at thwarting them.

Re: Idea to help slow down spammers

Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2016 9:38 pm
by KanedaFr
Sik wrote:The problem is that registration is actually locked (i.e. needs admin approval) so those bots actually by-passed the registration form, at least that's what I'm gathering so far. So I think your solution would be useless.
After some checks it seems that @Marc1706 was right.
They didn't bypass the preregistration : spammers registered some days ago, before my strict activation settings.
I think they went through all the questions and so shared a script to register between bot devers.
I activated the admin validation : 130 spammers registrations to validate (so to delete) in 2 days.....
I'll keep it like this until I fix the problem, mainly updating questions and phpbb
As for why this site? They're like search engines, they just scan every site they can stumble upon and will try to spam everything. The thing is how effective can you be at thwarting them.
It's mainly russian bots....so I assume links between russian megadrive forum and spritesmind but this forum is front line....
It could also be like you said, and pure "chance"

Re: Idea to help slow down spammers

Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2016 12:24 am
by KanedaFr
phpBB was updated some minutes ago...
let see if it stops this russian dark army.....

Re: Idea to help slow down spammers

Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:20 pm
by KanedaFr
unfortunatly, it doesn't stop them...
need to find how they register in batch now...

Re: Idea to help slow down spammers

Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2016 1:38 am
by Scorpion Illuminati
Maybe ask for the password for a random level in Blue Spheres and link to here. So the question may be something like:
What is the password for level 177 of Blue Spheres
Which the user can simply click the link and do a bit of searching to find it:
3348 4899 3202
OR
What is the password for level 2444 of Blue Spheres
5159 8840 0031
OR
What is the password for level 1 of Blue Spheres
3659 8960 3263
This would be a lot of work to implement for the bot developers considering there are about 5000+ codes on there that the answer could possibly be. It would take about a week to implement every code on there which is hardly worth the work just for a single site. Not only that but, because the question is completely random every time it would mean to make multiple accounts the bot would need to implement as many of the codes as possible as the code for 1 bot will not work for the other bot unless both bots get the same question.

Signed,

Scorpion Illuminati

Re: Idea to help slow down spammers

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2016 9:29 am
by Natsumi
You probably could just use S3K's maze generation algorithm to figure out this problem. The good side is that just any non-Sonic geek or someone who doesnt understand 68000 wouldnt be able to so easily get this thing working.

Re: Idea to help slow down spammers

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2016 9:46 am
by KanedaFr
Due to massive russian spammers fake registrations, I may have deleted valid accounts
if you get deleted, use the contact page on gendev.spritesmind.net

thanks

Re: Idea to help slow down spammers

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2016 3:31 pm
by Matej