Spammers

[Snowhog]

Re: Spammers

From what I've read, visual verification is already broken.

Really. Any sources one can read up about on this?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Spammers

I've read various stories about the breaking of yahoo, microsoft and google captchas.

It's explained pretty well near the middle of this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA?id=106ql


Mostly, it involved bad guys copying captcha images from those sites and then using them to on their own sites as teasers to get guys to drill down successively to dirtier porn photos. They create a dictionary of images and keys and use them to set up thousands of robotic email accounts on those. Since the email addresses end in "@gmail.com" and such, it is impossible to block all mail from gmail.com without blocking valid users.

[Snowhog]

Re: Spammers

I believe I've found the vulnerability in the KFN registration process that is being exploited by bots. I won't address it hear, but I'll get it to Open Source so he can evaluate it and possibly eliminate it.

[kubicle]

Re: Spammers

I don't think human spammers are a real problem. To be effective spam needs millions of readers, and a human spammer can't compete with spam bots, and are a very small minority when it comes to spam.

Also, a human spammer will quickly give up (and move elsewhere) if his/her spam/accounts are deleted (creating new accounts to be deleted just as swiftly isn't worth the effort...especially on smaller forums like ours)

And yes, like already pointed out on this thread, some captchas are better than others in stopping spambots, which have their ways around them.

I don't believe in blocking email providers like gmail, most people don't use their primary email for registering on the internet, and use a free email account(s) for that (blocking these will likely cause more grief than spam).

And finally, my thanks to the mods as well, spam has never been a major issue on these forums.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Spammers

Also, a human spammer will quickly give up (and move elsewhere) if his/her spam/accounts are deleted (creating new accounts to be deleted just as swiftly isn't worth the effort...especially on smaller forums like ours)

That's probably what we're seeing, however, any link posted here will be indexed rather quickly so perhaps it is worth is to some people. I think some spammers are paid very little and also set their sights very low. It just seems that there are always more where those came from.

I don't think human spammers are a real problem. To be effective spam needs millions of readers, and a human spammer can't compete with spam bots, and are a very small minority when it comes to spam.

I think you're right. I don't know how much spam needs to be deleted but I'm guessing it isn't high enough to be like the autospam we see in the email world. That would mean thousands a day. Perhaps we're already at the break even point and to block the last bit of spam would require a disproportionate effort.

[Snowhog]

Re: Spammers

An improved registration verification feature was incorporated into KFN recently. This should help reduce the number of 'spam' accounts that make it into KFN.

As previously stated, should anyone see a spam post, click on the Report to moderator link. One of the Moderators will take care of it.

Thank you.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Spammers

A couple days ago I saw a curious post and decided to examine the poster's CP. I was surprised to see that over the last year he had posted from over two dozen IP addresses! A few were from the US, most most were from various locations in the Mid-East. A few were from AT & T's international wireless links, so the individual was apparently using his cell phone to browse Kubuntu. Just goes to show how ineffective any kind of banning might be. This member was honest, using a single name, but had connected from many different ISPs. He could have been a spammer using multiple names from multiple ISPs via TOR, etc...

[Telengard]

Re: Spammers

I confess, I have used the report to mod button many times already to report spam and pornographic posts. It is just outrageous to think spammers would exploit a forum like this one, but they are scum anyway.

Thank you Kubicle, askrieger, Snowhog and all the mods for working to keep KFN clean and safe.