SpaMEGAdon II: The Spammening

[Dubious_wolf]

Get MO DAKKA!
YO GITZ GET BACK OUT THERE AND FIGHT!
I'm channelling my inner ork.

[Dominic Appleguard]

Well, if there are human beings opening accounts and then robo-posting, then it's a problem mods can ultimately solve. Real troubles don't emerge unless there's a hole in security that lets a computer make accounts faster than they can be banned.

[AlexanderDitto]

The current moderator report log... is my finest work to date. So beautiful. T_T

[Lord Chrusher]

Can I be a coauthor on the log for the number of post I marked as spam?

[AlexanderDitto]

Can I be a coauthor on the log for the number of post I marked as spam?

It is my magnum opus, but you will be thanked in the acknowledgements.

[AlexanderDitto]

For posterity:



(All from memory, by the way. I memorize soliloquies in my spare time.)

[Metcarfre]

[Graham]

Awesome.

[Foxmar]

Impressive Mr. Ditto. Make them fear you!

[Geoff_B]

Someone enjoyed it a little bit too much...

[Dominic Appleguard]

He's gone mad with power. Or has he? We should send him on a boat and poison him during a duel. To be sure.

[AlexanderDitto]

A spammer I just deleted had this in its profile:

Occupation: Human

NICE TRY SPAMMER

[Utilitarian]

So close spam bot. So close, and yet, so far.

[Dazzar]

I'm curious - When you register you have to put in what your favorite LRR video is. (Or is it the one that brought you here)

Which one(s) are the spam bots picking?

[AlexanderDitto]

I'm curious - When you register you have to put in what your favorite LRR video is. (Or is it the one that brought you here)

Which one(s) are the spam bots picking?

That's usually the easiest way to tell they're a spambot. They just put in a random string of characters, like "Obsfdsbzl".

Spammers have bots that make new accounts automatically. Bots can't really understand what "Favorite LRR video" means, so they just fill it with random garbage.

[Metcarfre]

A lot of them used to use "WGWZ" or some such, made them really easy to spot for a while.

[AlexanderDitto]

Heaven help us if LRR ever makes a video whose title is a random string of characters. D:

OK, deleting all those spam account must have rustled someone's jimmies, because the spam onslaught seems to have increased since last night. We got a ton of new spam accounts registering between last night and this morning. I don't know how that's possible, because deleting the accounts shouldn't be noticeably different to an external user than banning the accounts, which we were doing already. Unless it's just a blip in the system. But we're getting a new spam account registering every twenty minutes or so. :/

If Paul's already improved our defenses, I don't know what more we can do, other than some kind of mandatory but stupid question like "What is Graham's first name?" that the spambots would fail but a human would definitely not fail.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

That or you have a set of questions that is used to try and stop these random accounts and have it alternate. (Not sure if it already does, since I haven't tried making more then one account)

You might not get rid of all the accounts, but you might be able to stop a proportion of them.

I'm not an expert in bots, computers and the like but I'm guessing a bot can't read and understand question text?

[MattAn]

Question idea; "Pants."

...It'll *ruin* them. Then there's the obvious airspeed of an unladen swallow gag.

[Geoff_B]

Wait, wait, wait, I just thought of something:

@Ditto: I take it "Spamlet" is your favourite Shakespeare play?

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

Wait, wait, wait, I just thought of something:

@Ditto: I take it "Spamlet" is your favourite Shakespeare play?

*Ahem*



Although I admit that is pretty good. : )

[Foxmar]

Well the spam is worse than ever now I'm afraid. This is the first time I've seen porn in the LRR forums since I've been here. I'm not sure what can be done to fix this spam problem but if there starting to post porn in the forums that's might hurt LRR's image a bit.

[MattAn]

Well the spam is worse than ever now I'm afraid. This is the first time I've seen porn in the LRR forums since I've been here. I'm not sure what can be done to fix this spam problem but if there starting to post porn in the forums that's might hurt LRR's image a bit.

*Ahem*...

LoadingReadyRun: It's like porn, but better!

That was a legitimate thing for several years of early LRR. So..

[Dubious_wolf]

I think we need to see about a major overhaul of the system. Is there other forum software out there that could be better equipped to handle this sort of thing?

[General Michi]

I think I know what will stop the spam. We need to reset the top 6 post counts to zero.