New zero-tolerance spam policy

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Tim Green
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New zero-tolerance spam policy

Unread post by Tim Green »

The H&M forum has been under attack by spambots over the last couple of weeks. This has got so bad that I have now changed the forum registration options. Activation is no longer automatic. Accounts will only be activated after an administrator check and real names are required as user names. From today, I am also implementing a zero-tolerance policy on spam:

Zero Tolerance Spam Policy

Any spam postings or postings that might be interpreted as spam will result in immediate deletion of the account responsible for the spam and all its posts. The email address and IP address of the account will be banned permanently. Inclusion of spam links in forum profiles and posting signatures will also be seen as spam and will also result in immediate deletion of the associated account and all its postings. No questions will be asked, we will simply delete the accounts and all their associated postings immediately.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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David Makulec
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Re: New zero-tolerance spam policy

Unread post by David Makulec »

Thanks for all your hard work, and sorry dealing with other folks' garbage has to be a part of that work.

Your new policy has my full support.
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Discontinued UweS
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Re: New zero-tolerance spam policy

Unread post by Discontinued UweS »

Makes sense to me and you have my support as well.
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Tim Green
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Re: New zero-tolerance spam policy

Unread post by Tim Green »

The final straw was hard porn from Russia getting posted this morning. The problem is that the spambots now seem to have solved all the captcha programs, they can get through all of them automatically. I'm looking into alternatives.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Tim Frost
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Re: New zero-tolerance spam policy

Unread post by Tim Frost »

http://random.irb.hr/signup.php has some more difficult ones !
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Tim Green
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Re: New zero-tolerance spam policy

Unread post by Tim Green »

tfrost wrote:http://random.irb.hr/signup.php has some more difficult ones !
Yes, I actually considered the advanced math captcha, but I thought it was too cruel. Perhaps a complex regex problem... :twisted:
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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John Waller
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Re: New zero-tolerance spam policy

Unread post by John Waller »

Hi Tim,

Have you had a look at the results of the phpBB Best Captcha competition in 2009?

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &t=1819475
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Tim Green
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Re: New zero-tolerance spam policy

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi John,

It may be the community choice but it's already totally broken. I've tried it and it doesn't work. The reason is very simple, it's a programming error that a grade school student would be ashamed of: The text says, for example "drag the pencil into the circle". The graphics file showing the pencil includes the string "pencil" in its name in clear text. In addition to this, there are only four possible options. Even if you lock out the users after two tries, you will still get large numbers of successful spambots every day on popular sites. :evil:
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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