Spambots constantly on this forum
- Thread starter Yoshi178
- Start date
They were banned and eliminated over 15 minutes ago. The system is so slow they're just sitting there. *rolls eyes*bastardofmelbourne said:
Personally I'm just confused as to who they're even targeted at - it's not like the Escapist has the most robust of membership or foot-traffic these days, and the threads aren't around long enough to really contribute to any google search metrics.
Just seems like a wasted effort, really. Unless it's a troll/disgruntled ex-member/someone just taking advantage of the lack of tech team.
Just seems like a wasted effort, really. Unless it's a troll/disgruntled ex-member/someone just taking advantage of the lack of tech team.
Logically speaking, I'd think that a website which has been hemorrhaging for a year or two would be the perfect target for bots. It means that it's active enough for someone to see them, but not so active that they would be removed instantly.Wrex Brogan said:
And I'm not really informed on the way spambots work, but I don't believe they're a particularly high amount of effort to unleash. People made bots to play Hearthstone for them; that seems like far more effort for less return to me (since if you don't like the game enough to play it yourself, then why would you care about doing anything in it? and if you've got time to create a bot to play the game for you, I find it hard to believe you just wouldn't have the time to play it yourself).
Given that we've always had spambots, it seems like neither permutation of the captcha has worked.IceForce said:
I have had to set my IP address to the US the past few days just to access the site. Been like this for a while, I even get "perma-banned" from time to time. Oh well, part of the charm I guess.Adam Jensen said:
Well it's not as easy as having bots that can create accounts, but yeah I see your point.IceForce said:
Here's an idea for the Captcha: No Captcha at account creation; but for the first 48 hours after account creation, ALL new threads and posts must go through the Captcha first.
To really confound those spambots, make it one of those "identify X object in these pictures" kind.
To really confound those spambots, make it one of those "identify X object in these pictures" kind.
Okay, I can buy the idea they're looking for new content(though my faith isn't really there anymore).Basement Cat said:
I don't understand why they haven't updated the schedule to remove the shows that aren't hosted here anymore? Critical Miss's last strip was April 14. It's been two months and apparently no one can be bothered to even so much as mention "Hey, all of these things will no longer have new content. We're revising the schedule to reflect this". I haven't done web coding for years, but I'm pretty sure that this is something that could easily be accomplished in 30 minutes by someone who actually gives a damn.
Hell, someone has to link the new Yathzee videos every week. Presumably they could clean up page a little at the same time?
Unless they really are trying to distract people from the fact they pretty much have nothing but Yathzee at this point.
Maybe it's simply a matter of wanting to maintain appearances. "Please come visit our site and when you see the frontpage you'll see that we have...practically no regular content to speak of. Wait! Where are you going?!?"Dalisclock said:
*shrugs*
The problem is this guy/group are very persistent and are hard to deal with. This exact same spam and group showed up on the Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm forums, and even with their professional teams working on it, the only way Blizzard was able to put the fire out was to require you to play a certain number of games of Hearthstone and Heroes before posting, like they do with having an account/copy of the game for WoW/SC/Diablo/Overwatch.
What about a minimum badge number, which would require doing at least one quiz or more?
Bots can't do quizzes yet right?
Even if they can, they won't write that into the bots for just a single site.
Bots can't do quizzes yet right?
Even if they can, they won't write that into the bots for just a single site.
Not a bad filter to consider. Even have that quiz PM'd to a new user so they get one that's just the 'Prove you're a human' quiz, comes complete with a 'Human' badge.Vendor-Lazarus said:
Given they seem to exclusively create new threads, maybe have a post limit before you can create new threads? Or a time limit between created threads?
You know what I love seeing when I click into Gaming Discussion?
See if you can count how many times "baba" shows up!
(It's all of them. It shows up all of the times.)
See if you can count how many times "baba" shows up!
(It's all of them. It shows up all of the times.)
The mods seem to have rounded up a posse to stamp the bots out. So far so good... well for the last couple of days at least.
Yeahhh, so...
This sort of thing should really be ringing alarm bells. Big massive alarm bells.
There's no way a bot should be getting anywhere close to a hundred posts, nevermind a hundred different threads cluttering up the forum.
You can throw even more mods at the problem, but it's still not stopping the problem at its source. Either reinstate captchas on the forums, or implement some other solution, such as:
Bang, the lion's share of the spam gone, just like that.
This sort of thing should really be ringing alarm bells. Big massive alarm bells.
There's no way a bot should be getting anywhere close to a hundred posts, nevermind a hundred different threads cluttering up the forum.
You can throw even more mods at the problem, but it's still not stopping the problem at its source. Either reinstate captchas on the forums, or implement some other solution, such as:
I rather like this second idea. If a new user joins the forum, they're never going to need to make more than 2 or 3 new threads at the most. Put a restriction like that on all new accounts, at least until the account is 14 or 30 days old, or whatever.theSovietConnection said:
Bang, the lion's share of the spam gone, just like that.
