How can we get rid of the Russian spammers?

[Elena]

They are with their silly announces selling no matter what.. and perhaps having viruses on their links...

I know it happened last week too...

[Mission]

Personally, I don't think we can - this needs to happen on a cosmic level. (By which I mean the forum software is modified to catch this particular flavor of 'bot or they get tired of posting here and getting cleaned out if they're not 'bots. Most of these user names appear to me to be 'bots.)

Your best bet is to just to report and ignore them. Most people can't read their posts and you all know better than to click on any of their links. (I hope.) Responding to them is a waste of time, because they usually just hit and run.

From my experience, these things go in waves. We had them about two years ago and they were only around for a month or two and then the cosmos sent them away for a while. So keep reporting in case we miss them, ignore their posts otherwise and just sit tight.

[michaelsbagley]

While I don't know all the intimate details of PHPBB's software (what I think the Pub uses as it's "engine"), I think users from certain domains can be blocked from registering, or perhaps even set to undergo more review before being allowed to register.... An easy solution would be to set those features on ALL ".ru" email addresses.

[Mission]

I know there is some sort of verification process in place which checks the IPs against a list from other forum SPAM reports and it is blocking the vast majority of these things. I've looked at the "verifying" list of users requesting forum access a couple of times and it is much, much larger than the number of posts we're getting. If all of those people got through, we'd be awash in SPAM posts. So it's working better than it appears to be; most spammers aren't getting through.

I've also noticed that most of the emails are free email accounts like gmail, so the .ru thing might work for some of them, but not the majority of them. On top of that, I looked up some of the IPs when I was banning the ones that got through and they're not all Russian.

[wes1761]

Thats fun stuff trying to keep up with all the spam....

[Silkie McDonough]

Make them walk the plank?

;)

[jendobyns]

Well, Stynky is cleaning them up as fast as he can. Sending reports when you see them lets him know they're there if he's busy tending to other things.

And am I the only one who sees this as rather ironic? The Pyracy Pub being raided by these folks, with the goal being plunder or mayhem?

[Silkie McDonough]

I think it is a hoot ...and has been for several years now.

[Mission]

That Stynky. He's my hero.

[Stynky Tudor]

Elena, it’s a constant, never ending global trend. We've seen it before and it's just a matter of wading through it until a better scheme is devised to baffle their efforts.

By now I would hope most of our users are smart enough to avoid viruses by not clicking on/following spam links.

Jendobyns, though I would like to take credit for keeping spam at bay – really, I’m not that fast. Both Mission, Dutchman and the Moderators do their share of keeping things tidy – with Mission doing most of it.

Michael, some days I’m on the verge of blocking users registering with .ru email addresses. But as Mission points out, there's plenty of spammers using aol, gmail and msn/hotmail email accounts, so blocking .ru in it’s self is the answer.

But I do block specific email domain names that churn out streams of spam/bot users and are just an obvious front for an online marketing scheme.

As Mission pointed out, the Pub is part of a service that collects spammer information, names, ip and email addresses and shares it with the rest of the message board community. So when a known spammer has been flagged on another message board and then tries to register onto the Pub - the Pub will automatically bans/freezes their account.

Everytime I login - I easily delete between 20 and 70 flagged spammers from the Pub’s database. No one knows about them because they never get through the front door or get the chance to post their spam.

The very few that do slip by and annoy us - is such a small percentage compared to that number trying to get in and exploit us.

As for motives or goals – plunder or mayhem, I would assume it’s a combination of both depending on who’s sending it.