Spam attacks

[Kiwi]

Some of you might have noticed that the spam attacks have gradually increased over the last month or so. The modding team have been pretty quick to delete posts as and when they've been spotted, so hopefully your use of the forum won't have been disturbed too much.

However there is a slightly more worrying aspect in that this is happening inspite of the latest updates and most sophisticated level of kaptcha being used. Phatmonkey thinks that accounts might be registered by real people who then pass the login details to spam bots. These people are also using IP forwarding so its not possible to track them down by a trace but judging by previous IP traces, its likely that the spam is coming from Russia and may even be related to organised crime.

While the semi automated aspect means we probably won't be flooded with a torrent of spam and DoS attacks in the same way that Bassworld was, it does mean that there's not a lot we can do to prevent real people from signing up. There's quite a bit of similarity between spamming and grafitti, and the best way of dealing with graffiti is to cover it up as soon as it happens. That way the lack of exposure means spamming Basschat will hopefully end up being more effort than its worth.

If things got really bad, the only option we have to remove the potential completely is to subject each new account registration to an additional administrators approval. [u]I don't think there's a need to do that[/u] in the forseeable future while the mods are on top of things. HOWEVER if the mods miss out on something (because its been posted at 4am for example) then please bear with them or use the report button (as some of you already have done) to let a someone know.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that spam for breakfast might just be something we have to tolerate in the meantime but we'll be doing our best to stay on top of it.

cheers
Steve

[Florida_RRoe7_A]

I like this forum due to the fact that I get great responses from the members. Maybe because most of the people are from the UK and a broad. As far as spam goes I really don't know too much about that.....Keep up the good work.....

[Gadge]

Steve, [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=28825&st=40&p=595173&#entry595173"]back in September[/url] I asked whether you were using [url="http://www.botscout.com"]Botscout[/url], to which 'Machines' said he'd look into it — presumably you didn't, or weren't able to, integrate it into IP Board?

From what you've described of the latest forms of attack I concede that it won't prevent all of those strategies but it has certainly helped reduce spamming attempts on three different SMF forums I'm using it with ...

I also concede I use manual approval of registrations, which is definitely an extra pain in the bum!