Saturday, January 17, 2009

How stupid are spammers? *vent*

Thanks for your ideas.. I hope I did this right.
Posted by at

17 comments:

MinnesotaChick said...

We are not big, but have a good solid core group. Alot of people in rescue and the main thing is they all love animals.

Why are we getting hit like this?

This has been going on for about 3-4 months.. on and off. We turn the registration back on but then it starts again.

Arghhhhhhhhh so frustrating!!!!!!!!

January 17, 2009 at 11:34 PM
MinnesotaChick said...

:) Hey Drew!! :)

January 17, 2009 at 11:35 PM
drewzepmeister said...

DA...You caught me.

January 18, 2009 at 12:45 AM
Anonymous said...

DogAddicts,

I would like to start off by saying thanks for the support! Your spam issue will never go away until you put some type of defense in place. As a word press user I had to install 2 different plugins to control spam. The first one checks the IP address of the poster or person registering with several public black lists. The second one runs the content through a database of spam and compares for similarities. I looked at your site and was not sure what content management system you where running? I may be able to point you in the right direction for a spam filter, drop me an email and let me know what system you’re using and I will see what I can find. Animal rescue is important work; I will gladly point you in the right direction if I can!

Joe Tittin

January 18, 2009 at 9:28 AM
MinnesotaChick said...

Thanks Joe. I'm not sure what program it is. My husband set the site up.

Drew, you have to activate. :)

January 18, 2009 at 11:46 AM
OrbsCorbs said...

DA, your forum says "Powered by SMF 1.1.7 | SMF © 2006-2008, Simple Machines LLC" I'm not familiar with that software, but I checked, and your version of the software is the latest. There is a SMF 2.0 beta available, but you don't want a beta.

I administrate a phpBB forum and there are a couple of options for fighting spammers with that software. One is a setting that "Enables visual confirmation for registrations: Requires new users to enter a random code matching an image to help prevent mass registrations." You know, that's where they make you type in the letters and/or numbers in an image before you can register. That prevents bots from registering. Bots are automated programs that register themselves and spam up forums with ads or other crap. If that option is available on your board, it should be enabled.

The other option is requiring administrative approval to activate new accounts. Again, I don't know how your software works, but with phpBB there are three settings: you can allow new accounts to activate automatically; you can require new users to respond to an email that the board sends out to confirm that they have entered a valid email address (that is the setting most boards use); or you can set it so that an administrator has to manually activate each new account. If you have the last option and your board does not have a lot of traffic, then you might want to select that to weed out trouble before it happens.

I can also ban user IPs on our board, and I do that to spammers. In fact, if a lot of them are coming from one internet provider, I will ban that provider's entire range of IPs.

January 18, 2009 at 5:21 PM
MinnesotaChick said...

Thanks Orbs.

you can require new users to respond to an email that the board sends out to confirm that they have entered a valid email address

That's what we used to do. Now it's Admin that has to approve or reject, then the email is sent for them to activate.

We can ban the IP numbers, but I seriously don't like to do that.

January 18, 2009 at 5:35 PM
drewzepmeister said...

DA,for some reason I can't activate.

January 18, 2009 at 7:09 PM
MinnesotaChick said...

hmmmm... Thanks for letting me know!

I'll activate the account for you. Let me know if you have anymore problems, ok? Thanks

January 18, 2009 at 7:23 PM
drewzepmeister said...

Thanks DA.I'm in:)

January 18, 2009 at 8:03 PM
MinnesotaChick said...

Cool! I see that! Start posting!

January 18, 2009 at 8:27 PM
MinnesotaChick said...

I think I'm just going to delete this.. based on the google search KK did. I don't want to open up myself to more junk.

Thanks for the input everyone.

January 18, 2009 at 10:05 PM
kkdither said...

The hits are just how many different times your username is found by google. They use meta-crawling software to find new websites and check old ones for activity.

It relies on comments you've made, also on pictures you have uploaded, and anytime anyone uses your username online. Do you think your posts hold more weight than an actual website, comments or other mention of your name?

January 20, 2009 at 2:39 PM
MinnesotaChick said...

Do you think your posts hold more weight than an actual website, comments or other mention of your name?

I don't understand...

January 20, 2009 at 8:24 PM
kkdither said...

I guess when you said you were going to delete the post... maybe I misunderstood you? I think your username with the dot com on the end matching your webpage would point spammers to your website more than a post, image or a comment? I don't know that I totally understand how "all the internets work." (j/k)

January 21, 2009 at 11:28 AM
MinnesotaChick said...

It was the content of the post. Don't want lurkers to get the feeling we are vulnerable.. you know?

January 21, 2009 at 5:20 PM
MinnesotaChick said...

I just wanted to add, they haven't gotten in to my site. Just registering with all these stupid names. I delete or reject them because I don't know what they would do if they did start posting. We had that happen one time when we first started. Dude posted porno pics all over. Pretty gross, especially since we have some very young members. We tightened up things quite a bit after that.

January 21, 2009 at 6:13 PM

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