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WTF with the spam?!

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zalew
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WTF with the spam?!

#1 Post by zalew »

srsly...
Image

secipolla
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#2 Post by secipolla »

I guess that happens when mods are sleeping and the Chinese are awake.
I noticed something lately: some spam posts that maybe would contain images, links or whatever just don't show them. We can see they are spambots as the posts are just fragments of earlier posts. It's still a bit of an inconvenience but not that much.
But when the spammers are people then I guess there's not much to do except banning the folks.

secipolla
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#3 Post by secipolla »

BTW, I noticed you didn't report them. If you do, they will be deleted.
I would like to ask the mods if we need to report all the spam posts/threads or if you can, for instance, delete in one go all of the spammer posts/threads. Then we just report one of them and avoid spamming you.

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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#4 Post by dilberts_left_nut »

secipolla wrote:I noticed something lately: some spam posts that maybe would contain images, links or whatever just don't show them. We can see they are spambots as the posts are just fragments of earlier posts. It's still a bit of an inconvenience but not that much.
One was /img tagged links to a .php url.
Presumably for click fraud, or potentially to deliver a malware payload to the vulnerable...
AdrianTM wrote:There's no hacker in my grandma...

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4D696B65
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#5 Post by 4D696B65 »

secipolla wrote: I would like to ask the mods if we need to report all the spam posts/threads or if you can, for instance, delete in one go all of the spammer posts/threads. Then we just report one of them and avoid spamming you.
I cant delete all a bots posts at once, I must do it one by one. It makes it a lot easier for me if you report them all. When you report a post a red triangle appears next to the thread and makes it pop out from the rest and is easier to find.
Thanks for reporting. :D

vbrummond
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#6 Post by vbrummond »

I dunno how many mods there are but whoever you all are you crush the spam pretty quick. Thanks.
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#7 Post by 4D696B65 »

You're welcome :D .
And thanks for the reports.

sgosnell
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#8 Post by sgosnell »

There is no known way to prevent spam. If there were, spam would disappear. It's an eternal war between the spammers and the rest of us, and it's an ever-escalating arms race. Every time a software block appears, the spammers find another way to get past the defenses. There are literally thousands, if not tens of thousands or more, of people who spam full-time for a living. It won't go away, so we may as well get used to either fighting or ignoring it.
Take my advice, I'm not using it.

zalew
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#9 Post by zalew »

secipolla wrote:BTW, I noticed you didn't report them. If you do, they will be deleted.
I usually report (and at first I don't know if it was reported so sometimes is clicked for nothin), here I just gave up.

I got nothing bad to say about the mods' hard work, but, well, couldn't an IT forum about a famous Linux distribution have some basic spam protection installed? ;) I once ran a huge phpbb forum without any fancy antispam apps and most spam that sometimes passed by was accounts created by hand (they often paste some wikipedia random article at first, to later update with viagra louis vuitton crap). Sweatshop employees are hard to protect from, but at least bots can best be stopped with custom-made protection (most plugins are quickly being cracked) like honeypot fields, timestamp validation, non-standard questions printed on img, etc. I know it's fucked up, but every spam that passes by here is that assholes' mafia success.

vbrummond
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#10 Post by vbrummond »

Perhaps the mods are not administrators and have no power over that? Or who is the admin is not willing or able? This is probably the most popular forums however I do not think it is official as in part of the Debian project. You take what you get.
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zalew
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#11 Post by zalew »

man, I understand that mods are not admins, etc. but spam IS a problem, everybody has to sleep sometimes or go to vacation and waiting for a mod to wake up and click every post by hand IS NOT a solution. applying some protection programmatically won't solve everything, but will decrease the latency of this crap. just sayin' there's room for improvement.

Randicus
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#12 Post by Randicus »

They struck again!
My question is, why have the last two salvos been about episodes of television series? Is there no longer any money to be made peddling shoes and handbags?

zalew
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#13 Post by zalew »

Randicus wrote:They struck again!
My question is, why have the last two salvos been about episodes of television series? Is there no longer any money to be made peddling shoes and handbags?
they probably want to trick ppl into downloading 'movies', to which you need some windows 'codecs', which are malware. just guessing.

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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#14 Post by vbrummond »

That kind of scam would work on most people. They download whatever sites tell them to.
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cynwulf

Re: WTF with the spam?!

#15 Post by cynwulf »

...

As far as I know the main problem here is the weak captcha system in use and the fact that spammer/bot accounts are not systematically removed and banned - meaning that in many cases they can simply come back again and again.

Personally the spam doesn't bother me... those dealing with it do a good enough job of "fire-fighting". The alternative is more staff - which equals more people with time on their hands breathing down members' necks - yes you'll have a cleaner board, but also a much more oppressive one.

The morale of this is - be happy with what you're got and stop moaning about the spam...

vbrummond
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#16 Post by vbrummond »

Just do not draft any mods from... that other place on the net. :P

But yeah. They are on top of the spam; just report it and dont reply to it.
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#17 Post by ComputerBob »

cynwulf wrote:...

As far as I know the main problem here is the weak captcha system in use and the fact that spammer/bot accounts are not systematically removed and banned - meaning that in many cases they can simply come back again and again.

Personally the spam doesn't bother me... those dealing with it do a good enough job of "fire-fighting". The alternative is more staff - which equals more people with time on their hands breathing down members' necks - yes you'll have a cleaner board, but also a much more oppressive one.

The morale of this is - be happy with what you're got and stop moaning about the spam...
Didn't you read this thread? Many people have already described several more-effective alternatives to handle spam without the oppression that you described.

And no one's moaning -- just looking for solutions.
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JohnDeere730
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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#18 Post by JohnDeere730 »

vbrummond wrote:Just do not draft any mods from... that other place on the net. :P
I agree...those bastards. :lol: :mrgreen:

cynwulf

Re: WTF with the spam?!

#19 Post by cynwulf »

ComputerBob wrote:Didn't you read this thread?
Yes - did you read the other thread and in particular this post? http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 60#p391860
JohnDeere730 wrote:I agree...those bastards. :lol: :mrgreen:
No, I'm sure he's referring to butnut forums as there's no moderators at the other place...

There are no moderators I tell you!

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Re: WTF with the spam?!

#20 Post by ComputerBob »

cynwulf wrote:
ComputerBob wrote:Didn't you read this thread?
Yes - did you read the other thread and in particular this post? http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 60#p391860
Oh, now I get it. You're saying that you posted in this thread today, to reply to a post that mzlilikazi posted in a completely different thread over 5 months ago. :roll:
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