Dearest mods, these spambots are getting out of hand!

[fullenglishpint]

Is there anything that can be done to improve security or make it harder to spam? Every single day I go into my subscribed threads and there's a raft of 7 or 8 topics that have those copied posts with a load of random links from the same user.

[zestoi]

i don't think it would be too hard to add some code to vbulletin to help catch these - they mostly seem to fall into a pattern of posting a bit of text (scraped from the same thread often, but not always) and then 3 images that aren't actually images.

easiest way would be to automatically delete posts that contain images that don't respond with a 404 (i.e: the user just got the url wrong initially) but with a valid status code (200, 301, 302 etc) but the content-type of the actual url isn't an image. would mean fetching the urls, or at least requesting the 'head' but can't see how it would be too hard to implement.

i'd be willing to help/do it if wanted.

edit: these are all probably from some new rules added to xrumer/scrapebox. a quick dig on a site like blackhatworld dot com may well shine some more light on the situation...

[Jester]

ironically, the post above me was a spammer.
we do our best guys, just keep reporting the spammers when you notice them and we will deal with them asap.

[zestoi]

i'll keep clicking the "report spam" button when i see them then

[CionniAsDj]

captcha in the sign up form?
Bit annoying but should do the job
Spam bots everywhere!!

[zestoi]

not going to stop most bots - there's plenty of "captcha solver" services out there. the bot saves the captcha image, submits it to the service via their api, an actual person enters the string that gets sent back via the api, then the bot enters the string... works with simple captchas anyway. a captcha that makes u click on the result or something would help...

[CionniAsDj]

not going to stop most bots - there's plenty of "captcha solver" services out there. the bot saves the captcha image, submits it to the service via their api, an actual person enters the string that gets sent back via the api, then the bot enters the string... works with simple captchas anyway. a captcha that makes u click on the result or something would help...

Mm, I guess you are right!!
A good captcha should help anyway, and, the ultimate solution ( ahah quite invasive ) could be to log off ALL the accounts, and force the user to make a login with captcha (only one time, a check over existing user).
Next times you login will be without captcha.
This, and signup captcha, should eliminate them all.
I know, this is not the nicer way

[fullenglishpint]

Just to clarify, I'm not bashing the mods here, just wondering if there was any way to avoid the spam somehow. Some kind of captcha or similar for a user's first 5 posts?

[dripstep]

What about putting a question on the signup page, or rotating questions? Something simple like "name 3 DJ gear companies" or "who makes the S4". I don't know how bots operate, so it may or may not work.

Or we could be the most elite DJ forum and go invitation only. Haha JK.

[Xonetacular]

just put a captcha at signup... I'm really surprised there isn't one.

not going to stop most bots - there's plenty of "captcha solver" services out there. the bot saves the captcha image, submits it to the service via their api, an actual person enters the string that gets sent back via the api, then the bot enters the string... works with simple captchas anyway. a captcha that makes u click on the result or something would help...

and how would anyone know before it was implemented and if these bots use captcha solvers?