Spammer/Bot Cleanup

[severenz]

I've disabled forum registrations until I find a solution. In the last 24 hours, I've had 30+ signups. Either the bots have cracked the vbulletin captcha (not impossible, been done before) -- or someone is paying humans to register an account and then the bot takes the account over. Either way, it's a pain in the ass and apparently is widespread:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...aptcha+problem

I believe I have deleted all of the posts generated by these accounts. If you find one, please email it to me.

Thanks

[donteatpoop]

Who was the guy who kept marking every Friday his birthday on here? And then we celebrated that he was an asshole for like two weeks? Does anyone remember to see if that bastard got hit?

[severenz]

Sounds like that wasn't the one that signed up in the last 24 hours... they were relentless.

[Dragavan]

... or someone is paying humans to register an account and then the bot takes the account over.

This is actually being done by unwitting humans in a lot of recent cases. These guys create a mildly amusing site that requires a "check" to post or log in or whatever, to prove you are human and not a bot. They show these people the image from ANOTHER site the bot that runs the site wants to log into and lets them decipher it... then logs into the other site using the text the person entered. The unwitting human gets to post on and use the "fun" site without knowing they let a bot log into some other site in the process.

I read a whole thing on this a couple months ago. Ingenious way to use people as a tool in the fight against these methods people put in place to stop the bots.

[apotheosis]

It seems kind of funny that they would target this forum... It's not like we are exactly bursting at the seems with activity.

[Sven Smokevich]

http://forums.infinite-story.com/sho...light=birthday

Dude's still here, DEP. Don't look like he a spammer tho.

[donteatpoop]

http://forums.infinite-story.com/sho...light=birthday

Dude's still here, DEP. Don't look like he a spammer tho.

lol. Oh yeah, that's him. Strange that he hasn't had a birthday in a while.

[Locke]

The user Chris Timothy was legitimate. Sent me a PM a few days ago. Message reads as sent by a "guest" now - not sure if this is due to moderator action.

[donteatpoop]

The user Chris Timothy was legitimate. Sent me a PM a few days ago. Message reads as sent by a "guest" now - not sure if this is due to moderator action.

I'll look into it.

[donteatpoop]

I'll look into it.

...and I have no idea how to un-deny him. Nice.