Keeping the ba$t@rd$ out...

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 06 September 06 10:49 am

I think it's time to seriously consider a Turing test for loging in and registering to this site.

The newest REGISTERED user this morning is an online viagra selling site.

I was under the impression we were vetting registrations to keep this stuff out?

The Garner Family · Post by **The Garner Family** » 06 September 06 11:19 am

I once got one of those tablets stuck in my throat... I had a stiff neck for days!

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 06 September 06 11:34 am

I've just had a trawl through the first 10 pages or so of the memberlist sorted by date joined decending (ie latest members). The following list are almost definately spammers, determined by their supplied www adresses;

Audi7Spy
datingservices2
dollaralerterw
dorveishique
duckdawg
fox2006
GiantPlayaht
in4wikiu
InDigo72
Limfoman
MaugleeRobins
Nadejd890
Namibiya69
squirrelwarez
stantorley
TopGunMen
Vulkanbabe
zooworms

Some of these are dating services, others are p()rn sites, and I bet you London to a brick that none of them have *ANY* interest in geocaching.

Actually while I was compiling this list it occurred to me that the main reason we are being targetted by spammers is because we allow web addresses in our user profiles. Maybe if we disallowed web site listings and deleted those we already have it might got quite a way towards removing the spammers from our midst. Take away their incentive to spam us.

I know this might seem like a drastic measure to take and could prove unpopular with some legitimate members of the forum. Website designing and showing off to the world your geocaching exploits *is* a lot of fun, I know, but being spammed isn't. Maybe the code makers behind this site can come up with another way of linking to our personal websites that doesn't allow spammers to get a foothold...

Geof · Post by **Geof** » 06 September 06 11:59 am

You name it they will try it

Could we stiffen things up by making a Nominate a spammer function.

ideology · Post by **ideology** » 06 September 06 12:39 pm

bugger, we went through the list a couple of weeks ago and weeded out about 80

we've been planning to put a turing test thingy on here for a while

in the meantime, we have given you access to delete any spammers you see - we'll pm you the details

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 06 September 06 1:46 pm

cheers

teamkittens · Post by **teamkittens** » 06 September 06 6:20 pm

You may want to consider adding "ref=nofollow" to all user supplied urls such as profile websites and the like. This prevent search engines from following those links or at least not using them for adding to a pages rank, that reduces the value of a spammer adding their profile to this site to zero. (though it probably wont stop them trying)

EcoTeam · Post by **EcoTeam** » 06 September 06 6:42 pm

ideology wrote:bugger, we went through the list a couple of weeks ago and weeded out about 80

we've been planning to put a turing test thingy on here for a while

Isn't it just a matter of switching on the "graphic registration" thingy or whatever it is called? The one where the user must read numbers from a displayed graphic to verify they are human.
My phpBB forum version has this feature built in (but you have to enable it in the setup) and I thought it's supposed to be fool-proof?

EcoDave

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 06 September 06 6:48 pm

EcoTeam wrote:Isn't it just a matter of switching on the "graphic registration" thingy or whatever it is called? The one where the user must read numbers from a displayed graphic to verify they are human.
My phpBB forum version has this feature built in (but you have to enable it in the setup) and I thought it's supposed to be fool-proof?

EcoDave

It's called a Turing Test or a CAPTCHA, but they are far from fool-proof, or bot-proof for that matter.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha for more info

I think a CAPTCHA will probably stop a fair number of spammers, but not all.

Sombody CMIIW, but the phpBB software will be ugraded in the future, possible with the inclusion of a CAPTCHA module...

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 06 September 06 6:52 pm

All new registrations are disabled until the account is manually enabled and that doesn't happen until the account information is checked and the any web page visited.

None of those accounts are active, so they can't post to the forums or have their link displayed on the links page.

I modified the link page code some time ago so that a member has to have an active account and at least one forum post to have a web page link displayed.

The 'latest member' shows the last registration, irrespective of its activation state. The member list also shows all registrations, active or not so it is not representative of the active members.

The reason they have been left is that the name and email address can't be used again. If they are deleted, the spammer is free to try again with the same name and email address.

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 06 September 06 6:58 pm

The latest phpbb release has the CAPTCHA code. There are plans to upgrade, however we can't just drop in the new release as the original was modified to include some extra info in the profiles.

Plans are to move that to the cachers 'My' page to make it easier to upgrade the bbs software, however, like all things, it takes time to do so and ensure nothing breaks in the upgrade.

ideology · Post by **ideology** » 12 November 06 6:55 am

loon, any chance you could cull out the latest crop of spammers? thanks

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 13 November 06 10:08 am

ideology wrote:loon, any chance you could cull out the latest crop of spammers? thanks

Yes, there's every chance... D

(Still think this could be done automatically)

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 13 November 06 10:32 am

The Ginger Loon wrote:
(Still think this could be done automatically)

Yes, it could but then you would have nothing to do.

The Ginger Loon · Post by **The Ginger Loon** » 13 November 06 2:01 pm

riblit wrote:
The Ginger Loon wrote:
(Still think this could be done automatically)
Yes, it could but then you would have nothing to do.

What you really mean to say is Yes, it could but then I'd have nothing to *whinge about*