Unwelcome post this morning

[sebastiaan56]

Bob,

I didnt know where to post this so Ill start here. This morning Sydney time a rather non lutherie post. Quickly removed, thx moderators.

I know I used the term "p@rn" yesterday and wondered if this attracted the rabble. or is this just the real job of the moderators, keeping the riff raff out,

Sebastiaan

[kiwigeo]

The post says something about the intelligence of these spammers. They actually think that were even remotely interested in pornography...apart from the sort that involves pictures of sexy tonewood or voluptuous guitars.

[Bob Connor]

These guys have bots that constantly scour the net looking for ways to peddle their spam.

Luckily I was online and had spotted a Chinese IP had logged on. I'd just done a trouceroute and a google search when that post appeared so I knew it was from a known spamming IP.

Most of these posts are automated so I've taken steps to make it more difficult for them.

The IP has now been blocked and I've changed the registration setup so you have to type one of those visual identification numbers before you can register.

It's almost impossible to block all of China unfortunately as the IP addresses given to China by APNIC are discontiguous ie not all in the same block. So there are around 500 address ranges that would have to be entered into the system to block the entire country.

Plus some of the spammers use anonymous proxies that have addresses in other countries so they would get past it that way.

I'm afraid the best that we can do is to be vigilant.

If it becomes more of a problem I'll block the entire country at my firewall rather than in the forum software.

Cheers

Bob

[Bob Connor]

OK. We just got another one so I've set it up so that accounts can only be activated by the Admin.

This means that any new person wanting to register will have to wait until I activate the account before they can post.

Cheers

Bob

[kiwigeo]

Heres a little link I have in my weblog. The email address harvesters lock on to it and they get directed to a website containing a a list of the email addresses of known spammers. The spammers on the list then get a dose of their own medicine.

http://english-102078237900.spampoison.com/

[kiwigeo]

OK. We just got another one so I've set it up so that accounts can only be activated by the Admin.

This means that any new person wanting to register will have to wait until I activate the account before they can post.

Cheers

Bob

I didnt think we were going to last long the way you had things set up. Spammers are like bush flies on cow sh*t...theres never only one.

[Dennis Leahy]

Bob, are you saying that some human took the time to look at the graphic on the log-in screen, and typed in the characters? Or that a bot somehow got around it and registered? (I assume it had to be a human.)

================

A reminder as well that if you post your full email address online on a forum, the bots will find it, and you will get your email address added to many spam lists. You probably already have enough stock tips, mortgage lenders, sources for Viagra and Cialis, and if you're like me, your penis has been extended to the point where you can jump rope with it and has become a bit of a nuisance.

So, if you post your email address, at least use something like this:

myname at mydomain dot com

(though I wonder if email harvesting bot software has already been re-written to look for the word "at" + something + "com" or "net")

and don't do this:

myname@mydomain.com

Dennis
p.s. If you have a website, you should start over with a brand new email address and obfuscate it, and do not use a catch-all at the mail server.

[Hesh1956]

Do you guys still have that link?

[Bob Connor]

Dennis

Some of the more sophisticated bots can now read the CAPTCHA that is provided by phpbb2 by a form of OCR .

Bob

[Alain]

Do you guys still have that link?

Ha! I'd be curious too!!!!