Bot Members on the website?

[jon]

Don't know if y'all are still having this problem, but the info in the link below stopped all the bogus signups on the site I manage.

You just add a question on registration that bots can't easily answer. I used:
What's the lowest number below?:
32 12 18 99 42


http://phpbbcom.phpbbservice.nl/kb/article/custom-profile-fields-as-an-anti-spammer-tool.html

[Stubborn Puppet]

Guess who's back?

That's right, the adbots!

I know Fairweather Fan (Ted) will take care of 'em for us, but we can help them from running for too long by reporting them right away. All you have to do is sign in, locate an adbot or spam post and click that little triangular warning sign with the exclamation point just to the left of "QUOTE".

You can also use that for when other members are inappropriate, way off topic or otherwise out of line. Hey, I'll be the first to admit that I need to report myself to the admin sometimes

[fairweather_fan]

it looks like chris k deleted the offending posts before i saw them, and that bot has been banned. the account had been approved back in april of 2011, so perhaps just an admin mistake letting that account slip through the cracks.

i'll stay vigilant as far as not approving suspect accounts, but as stubborn puppet said please report any posts that clearly don't belong here.

sorry about the spam posts, now back to your regularly scheduled programming!

ted

[Stubborn Puppet]

Wow, that's impressive patience for an adbot (or whatever it was) to wait that long to post.

[fairweather_fan]

well, after going through our approved members list with a fine tooth comb, it appears we've been pretty 'lucky' to not see a lot more of the type of posts that showed up this morning.

without trying to "call out" anyone specifically, it looks like there was a bit of a breakdown in the oversight of the account activation process from the beginning of 2011 until about june or july. literally hundreds of quite obvious sham/spam accounts were activated. i spent some time this morning dropping the ban-hammer all over the place, so hopefully we'll not see much in the way of spam going forward. if you do see a spam post, as stubbornpuppet posted earlier, please use the report button.

i erred a bit on the side of caution when banning accounts this morning but, if i did somehow ban your active and actual user account- a thousand pardons. please register again, and i'll get you activated.

thanks!
ted

[fairweather_fan]

regular forum users/readers may notice that our "Total Members" count on the bottom of the main forum page took a pretty big dip tonight. i finally got the chance to go in and delete (as opposed to ban) a couple of hundred spam/bot accounts. we went from 707 forum 'members' to 425.

i feel pretty confident that no legitimate forum users got caught up in my 'dragnet', but anything's possible. if a forum user finds that their account has been deleted, please email:

fairweather_fan (at) hotmail.com

thanks!