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New Anti-Spam measures

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Absent Minded
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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#41 Post by Absent Minded »

AnInkedSoul wrote:
Absent Minded wrote:Additionally, if someone is not able to register they are redirected to a page that tells them how to contact our staff to remidy the problem. So, nobody is being locked out with out a remidy to fix the situation.
Actually it does not seem to tell you how to contact the staff, you are just told the following on the registration page.
Your IP ------ or your username ----- or your e-mail address --------- has been blocked because it is blacklisted. For details please see http://www.stopforumspam.com/api?------ ... ----------
An entry on the blacklist may have several reasons:
1. You are a well-known spammer.
2. Last time a well-known spammer was using the dynamic IP address which you got from your ISP (Internet Service Provider), your e-mail address or the username you have choosen.
3. Your ISP is well-known for a lot of spamming customers and is not fighting against spammers enough.
Oh and that last reason seems kinda shitty to me.

Just sayin...
I am sure the contact info was suppose to be on the reason for denial information page. I will ask Mez about it though just incase somehow it has been missed. I don't know the url of the page so I can look at it myself.

While it would really suck to be an innocent victom of a rogue ISP, denying their entire IP range is about the only way to deal with ISPs that refuse to play ball with the rest of the internet. Once your customers can't go anywhere, they complain, then they change services if nothing changes. Loss of revinew is about the only thing some companies care about and the only way to get them to play nice with the rest of us on the internet.
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Updated Nov. 19, 2012

MartinTruckenbrodt
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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#42 Post by MartinTruckenbrodt »

Hello,
you have a very interesting discussion about spam prevention here. ...

I'm the MOD author of Advanced Block MOD for phpBB3. It's a very effective solution for preventing spam with blacklists. It reduces false positives to a minimum. In my experience it reduces it to Zero. With Advanced Block MOD you can disable all CAPTCHAs completely. So it's very user fiendly, too.

Bye Martin

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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#43 Post by Absent Minded »

Hi Martin, thank you for stopping by. I will pass this post onto our server admins so they can have a look at it.
Serving the community the best way I can.
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Updated Nov. 19, 2012

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Mez
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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#44 Post by Mez »

MartinTruckenbrodt wrote:Hello,
you have a very interesting discussion about spam prevention here. ...

I'm the MOD author of Advanced Block MOD for phpBB3. It's a very effective solution for preventing spam with blacklists. It reduces false positives to a minimum. In my experience it reduces it to Zero. With Advanced Block MOD you can disable all CAPTCHAs completely. So it's very user fiendly, too.

Bye Martin
Hi Martin,

That's what we're using :)

Thanks for your work!

EDIT: Current stats: 632,456 spam attempts (automatically) blocked since we've put in place the new measures. We've also contributed back 124,080 entries to the centralised database.

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ComputerBob
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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#45 Post by ComputerBob »

Mez wrote:
MartinTruckenbrodt wrote:Hello,
you have a very interesting discussion about spam prevention here. ...

I'm the MOD author of Advanced Block MOD for phpBB3. It's a very effective solution for preventing spam with blacklists. It reduces false positives to a minimum. In my experience it reduces it to Zero. With Advanced Block MOD you can disable all CAPTCHAs completely. So it's very user fiendly, too.

Bye Martin
Hi Martin,

That's what we're using :)

Thanks for your work!

EDIT: Current stats: 632,456 spam attempts (automatically) blocked since we've put in place the new measures. We've also contributed back 124,080 entries to the centralised database.
Wow! Thanks for that excellent news! 8)
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dasein
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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#46 Post by dasein »

Over 17,000 actual, honest-to-gawd spam attempts per day????

Seems unlikely.

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Mez
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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#47 Post by Mez »

dasein wrote:Over 17,000 actual, honest-to-gawd spam attempts per day????

Seems unlikely.
Well, spam "hits". Bots will generally go throguh a process of a few pages before the spam is actually posted (register, update profile, post spam) etc etc - the smart bots will check whether their action is successful - but for the most part - the bots aren't smart - and will just spam the actions at the server - hoping that they're getting through.

So the number given is attempted spam "hits" - whether that be as the initial part of the process or not.

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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#48 Post by Bulkley »

dasein wrote:Over 17,000 actual, honest-to-gawd spam attempts per day????

Seems unlikely.
I believe it. I help moderate another website and it gets hammered. It's bots that do it. As Mez said, the number is attempts, not successes. We would be buried if we did not have a good anti-spam mod. The one that has been added to Debian User Forums has made a big improvement.

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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#49 Post by dasein »

Bulkley wrote:We would be buried if we did not have a good anti-spam mod. The one that has been added to Debian User Forums has made a big improvement.
But we didn't have an automatic anti-spam widget in place a month or so ago,and I was part of the small group who fought the problem manually. I can't speak to other venues, but I am confident that FDN did not have anywhere near 17,000 spams per day, not even on the worst day we ever had. It's off by at least one order of magnitude.

The "overcounting" explanation makes much more sense.

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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#50 Post by Bulkley »

dasein wrote:
Bulkley wrote:We would be buried if we did not have a good anti-spam mod. The one that has been added to Debian User Forums has made a big improvement.
But we didn't have an automatic anti-spam widget in place a month or so ago,and I was part of the small group who fought the problem manually. I can't speak to other venues, but I am confident that FDN did not have anywhere near 17,000 spams per day, not even on the worst day we ever had. It's off by at least one order of magnitude.
You dealt with what got by the Captcha. Bots keep trying until they get through. Attempts will always outnumber successes.

confuseling
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Re: New Anti-Spam measures

#51 Post by confuseling »

There was always the infamous "middle number" question.

Wrong answers for that would presumably count in that 17,000.

One or two of them might have even been bots... :-)
The Forum's search box is terrible. Use site specific search, e.g.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3A ... terms+here

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