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#1 2011-02-10 18:19:35

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Spam and You

Over the last couple of months the forums have been plagued by the recent surge of spam hitting the web world-wide. I spent the better part of two hours cleaning up some of the more graphic spam I've ever seen. I've also modified the forum software to parse new posts with Akismet to help put these evil-doers in check. While still early, it seems to be working well. [Update: It appears to be about 90-95% effective. It's surprising what gets through.]

I'll be purging the member lists of probable spammers as well. There may be some collateral damage. If you have signed up here but have never posted, it is likely your account will be deleted. I'm sorry if this inconveniences you but the number of fraudulent accounts here is getting out of hand. If for some reason you are unable to sign-up again due to a ban, please contact me via PM at the GMC or by emailing xot and this domain.

Last edited by xot (2011-02-15 17:18:32)


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#2 2011-03-26 14:51:26

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Re: Spam and You

Askimet is working pretty well, but fraudulent registrations are still going through the roof and rapidly approaching 2000. To curb this, I've added a simple anti-spam challenge question to the registration process. Any legitimate registrants should have no problem answering it. The question still remains if the spammers will bother finding the correct answer.

If it doesn't work, I've been thinking about a more sophisticated system similar to the ASIRRA image-based CAPTCHA, but with a Game Maker theme. The significant drawback is that it would probably require the registrant to have Game Maker installed on their system in order to pass the test.


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#3 2011-03-27 13:39:25

xot
Administrator
Registered: 2007-08-18
Posts: 1,239

Re: Spam and You

I've severely pruned the user table. If you have registered but have never posted in the forums, your account has been deleted. I tried to be clever, but it was simply too time consuming to manually delete nearly 2000 sleeping spam accounts. I apologize for the inconvenience if you have to re-register. This shouldn't happen again, but if I do need to prune the user table sometime in the future, simply posting a greeting in the Introductions topic will save you some grief.

On the plus side, the new registration challenge question seems to be doing the trick. Registrations of 50-60 spammers per day have completely ceased.


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