I goofed...so we'll see a bit of spam

Post by **cgrey8** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 4:31 pm

I had a user this morning that couldn't get registered because their email address was already in use. Due to a bug in the forum's member search, I cannot search for inactivated users by email. As you can imagine, there were thousands of inactive user accounts, mostly created by spam bots, that this guy's failed registration could've been amongst. So I decided, it'd be a lot easier to just delete all inactive accounts. Unfortunately, I couldn't delete them all at once. But I'm sure at least one batch of inactive accounts got activated instead of deleted.

Distracted doing this at work.
Early in the morning.
Frustrated at the forum not making the activation of a legitimate user easier.

Take your pick of excuses...fact is I screwed up. So I'll do my best at deleting the spam accounts as they post crap in the forum...already had to delete a few this afternoon.

decipha · Post by **decipha** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 9:36 pm

you can prevent bots by putting a simple question on the registration screen

on the efidynotuning forum, i had a simple question that asked how many wheels were on an 18 wheeler, in a year and the half i only had 3 spam bots get through, then one day i had about 15+ spam bots register within a 2 hour period, so when that happened i changed the registration question and havent a spam bot yet, been 3 months

apparently, spam bots talk to other spam bots

I cant recall what i changed it to, prob something goofy like how many cylinders does a four cylinder have or something to that extent, but its worked well

also, i find its best to delete the member and block the ip

Post by **cgrey8** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 7:06 am

The forum has that now. Users have to read the Getting Started sticky to get the passcode that is necessary to complete registration. I do need to change it though. The bots seem to have "learned" the word since inactive users are still getting successfully created.

The thing that's really kept them at bay is the email system on the forum still down. All new user registrations have to be activated manually which means the people registering HAVE to email me to get activated. That in and of itself cuts down on a lot of bot-activations since the bots are expecting activation emails to get sent to them and they never receive one from this forum.

All the spam we will be getting is from existing spam-user names that got activated instead of deleted as I intended to do.

decipha · Post by **decipha** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 12:11 pm

ah i see

sounds like a lot of maintenance, i dont send out a verification email either i have it set so the accounts are active as soon as they finish registration

makes it much easier on me since i dont have to do anything and them, since most people only register when they have to post something

Post by **cgrey8** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 3:19 pm

I don't have access to the forum server, only the phpbb forum itself. So I can't change any of the php programming associated with how people register. I can set the forum to immediately activate new accounts, but as of this morning, there were bot-created inactive accounts created over night. I changed the "password" users have to enter to get registered so the phrase to enter is not a derivative of the forum's URL name. I also had to update the Best Practices thread with the new phrase as well. I'm assuming bots won't be able to figure that out.

decipha · Post by **decipha** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 7:01 pm

cool sounds like you have her taken care of

either way, i know you'll zap them bastards when/if they arise

I goofed...so we'll see a bit of spam

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