Light Blade 21,742 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 Somepony has posted a lot of unreadable (for english-only-but-not-limited) posts in quite a substantial amount!!! 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Nova S. Aurora 438 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 This has been happening for about a week, I'm sure they're doing everything they can. I would suggest perhaps adding a captcha when creating threads if possible? If this is bot-powered? 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Badshot 168 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 I'm taking care of the bots now, seems they flooded in this time. Might take a bit. EDIT: Bots are now dealt with I believe, report any stray spam topics or bots 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Nova S. Aurora 438 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 After doing further research into the matter, it seems two other forums have had different ideas that may work in the scenario (I'm not sure what resources you guys have at hand for forum control). One simple idea is from a forum completely disallowed Chinese characters (I guess it would prompt the thread-maker that invalid characters are being used?) Thus preventing any spam. A different, but not free idea, is an IP lookup service that you could pair with forum registration that prompts a forum administrator to review accounts from red flag regions (i.e. India or China). Here are my sources: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/chinese-spam-bot-issue.866271/ http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/55016/chinese-bots-in-my-forum 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Badshot 168 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 I'll run it past the admins, it'd be their decision Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Skyrazer 663 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 I've been keeping tabs on the forums whenever these show up for the last week and all the staff have been banning them on sight, but this isn't going to cut it. You can easily tell when the're around by the >100 "Guests" showing up in the Online Users list. 2 hours ago, Nova S. Aurora said: After doing further research into the matter, it seems two other forums have had different ideas that may work in the scenario (I'm not sure what resources you guys have at hand for forum control). One simple idea is from a forum completely disallowed Chinese characters (I guess it would prompt the thread-maker that invalid characters are being used?) Thus preventing any spam. A different, but not free idea, is an IP lookup service that you could pair with forum registration that prompts a forum administrator to review accounts from red flag regions (i.e. India or China). Here are my sources: Reveal hidden contents https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/chinese-spam-bot-issue.866271/ http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/55016/chinese-bots-in-my-forum I've been to a few other old forums I used to frequent and I've seen similar spam messages which is really concerting. Those are all great suggestions and while the IP lookup service might not stick, restricting new accounts or what they try to post should be doable. Having new accounts or ones with score < 10 require their posts be approved by a Moderator / Admin before showing up should be pretty easy to set up. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MoltenKitten 62 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 4 hours ago, Skyrazer said: Having new accounts or ones with score < 10 require their posts be approved by a Moderator / Admin before showing up should be pretty easy to set up. but that might put off people Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Skyrazer 663 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 31 minutes ago, MoltenKitten said: but that might put off people That's only one option, but it's all up to the admins. For now we'll just deal with the spammers as they come in, but more anti-bot measures need to put into play when making an account. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SD13 2,711 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 Should we create a thread to warn of an incoming burst of spam... because I'm noticing A LOT of guests on the Pinkie Pie Fan Club thread right now. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Light Blade 21,742 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 @Shadow Dash A lot of guests? Where? I didn't see anything suspicious in Pinkie's FC Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Havocbyte 1,457 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 Now I'm seeing a lot of guests in the Fluttershy Fan Club thread. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MoltenKitten 62 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 most of those guests are probably just search engines and nothing to worry about Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SD13 2,711 Report post Posted March 27, 2017 38 minutes ago, Light Blade said: @Shadow Dash A lot of guests? Where? I didn't see anything suspicious in Pinkie's FC It seems to have died down. I noticed the guest list had gotten to 90-ish, and the guest list showed about 60 of them were viewing that one page. But there doesn't seem to be any spam, so I guess it must have been a search engine or something. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AaronMk 501 Report post Posted March 28, 2017 This is why we need communal-municipalism, to kill spam-advertising multi-national corporations. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
