Latest large spam attacks - can anything be done at all?

Gordon

I was keeping an eye out..!

Zaph

Gordon wrote: »

That's just me and Zaph trying to outdo each other

I know when I'm beaten! It's like trying to keep up with a more relentless version of the Ruubot. I'm just content in the knowledge that I'm ahead of Beruthiel.

Zaph

alwaysadub wrote: »

Did you wait to come back till Zaph was just catching up on you?
Smart.

I think I got to within about 200 and that seemed to be the trigger.

Boards.ie: Danny

Zaph wrote: »

I know when I'm beaten! It's like trying to keep up with a more relentless version of the Ruubot. I'm just content in the knowledge that I'm ahead of Beruthiel.

She better watch out. A few more Sundays and I'll be beating her too

strobe

I've a suggestion, not sure how implementable it is. What if there was a separate check box (circle) thing in the 'report post' screen along with 'report post' and 'report sig'. A dedicated 'report spam' one. When people click this one it means that these posts (and these alone) can be altered/deleted and the user banned by any mod on the site rather than just mods of that particular forum. If that makes sense?

So when a post gets flagged as spam in AH or Celebrity and Showbiz, for example, a mod from The Nocturnal Forum or the Australia New Zealand forum would be able to check it and delete it, and visa versa.

A kind of interdepartmental co-op approach.

Biggins

strobe wrote: »

I've a suggestion, not sure how implementable it is. What if there was a separate check box (circle) thing in the 'report post' screen along with 'report post' and 'report sig'. A dedicated 'report spam' one. When people click this one it means that these posts (and these alone) can be altered/deleted and the user banned by any mod on the site rather than just mods of that particular forum. If that makes sense?

So when a post gets flagged as spam in AH or Celebrity and Showbiz, for example, a mod from The Nocturnal Forum or the Australia New Zealand forum would be able to check it and delete it, and visa versa.

A kind of interdepartmental co-op approach.

Simple idea but brilliant!
Good one Strobe.

28064212

Zaph wrote: »

I know when I'm beaten! It's like trying to keep up with a more relentless version of the Ruubot. I'm just content in the knowledge that I'm ahead of Beruthiel.

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

She better watch out. A few more Sundays and I'll be beating her too

Lol, I think she saw this thread first thing in the morning :pac:

OldGoat

strobe wrote: »

I've a suggestion, not sure how implementable it is. What if there was a separate check box (circle) thing in the 'report post' screen along with 'report post' and 'report sig'. A dedicated 'report spam' one. When people click this one it means that these posts (and these alone) can be altered/deleted and the user banned by any mod on the site rather than just mods of that particular forum. If that makes sense?

So when a post gets flagged as spam in AH or Celebrity and Showbiz, for example, a mod from The Nocturnal Forum or the Australia New Zealand forum would be able to check it and delete it, and visa versa.

A kind of interdepartmental co-op approach.

One problem with that is (speaking for myself here only) I don't look at other forums reported posts and I don't get notified of them. So if you report a spammer in Aardvark forum it's very unlikely I'll see it.
I would imagine it's the same for most other mods too.
If there were a dedicated Spanner (<---Ha, mistyping WIN) Spammer Report forum I'd happily go in there and kill stuff if I had the ability.

Ken.

OldGoat wrote: »

One problem with that is (speaking for myself here only) I don't look at other forums reported posts and I don't get notified of them. So if you report a spammer in Aardvark forum it's very unlikely I'll see it.
I would imagine it's the same for most other mods too.
If there were a dedicated Spanner (<---Ha, mistyping WIN) Spammer Report forum I'd happily go in there and kill stuff if I had the ability.

But if there was a button available to mods only that could nuke spam anywhere and for example you were browsing after hours and seen spam you could take care of it.
I think that's what strobe was suggesting. (sorry strobe if i'm mistaken)

Boards.ie: Paddy

I reckon that this is a job for Bayesian filter. The spam we're dealing with is mostly pretty obvious stuff. 'Watch this stream of an NFL game' etc etc.

There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to recognise it at source and either flag it as awaiting approval or just disallow it entirely. There will be some training and perhaps some false positives but I think we can solve at least 80% of the problem with this approach.

It also has the benefit of killing spam floods very quickly since once a message is identified as spam the bayes filter will stop the flood in it's tracks.

I'm still in proof of concept/effort estimation territory with this but hopefully early in the new year I'll be able to start rolling out something.

My name is URL

Socialist_Pig wrote: »

as regards the spam,its running the banlist!!

Gordon wrote: »

That's just me and Zaph trying to outdo each other

The competition is fiercer than anyone could have imagined! :pac:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056484052

Gordon

Deary me, even Mods aint safe from my flailing banhammer!

Gordon

Incidentally, I checked some figures on a certain type of spam that's quite obvious (I mean, really obvious that it's spam) and saw that there was quite a jump in October. Not that this will surprise anyone, though. The last time there was any spam of this exact sort was in October 2008 strangely, where we saw 131 spam accounts registered in a period of two days. The below is number of (one specific type of) registrations on a daily basis. I reckon this type of spam is possibly done by a small group of people, so could simply disappear as quickly as it came.



Also, these are registrations, not 'posters'. They are accounts that are sitting dormant, waiting to post some spam.

Overheal

Gordon wrote: »

Also, these are registrations, not 'posters'. They are accounts that are sitting dormant, waiting to post some spam.

Thats what I was thinking. I was noticing lots of new accoutns being created with zero postcounts and reckoned that had to be what was occuring.

Frankly, I would delete any account that hasn't made a post within the first 14 days of it's registration.

accoutns

...yep, had enough beer.

mecco

(more than) Similar to what strobe said

How about a groupsource approach to it? Anyone that has over 1000* posts (for example) can mark a post as spam. Once 3* people mark it, it gets made invisible until a suitable mod/supermod/admin/whateverYouCallEm decides to reinstate the post or ban the account.

Also, if you use the spam button 5* times and it isn't agreed with by the decision makers, then you lose the ability to report it. Might be necessary for the group warfare in forums like soccer, politics, AH , etc

*numbers are obviously just examples

EDIT: Having re-read what strobe said, it's exactly the same actually. I thought he was saying just mods can flag as spam, which might increase the workload. Ignore me people!!

Boards.ie: Paddy

We had our quarterly hack day yesterday and I decided to take a look at implementing this anti-spam technique:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_spam_filtering

It seems to have worked pretty well although we'll probably need to do some extra work on it so that it will scale properly(it was a hack day project after all!).

There will also be a period where we need mods and admins to help train the filter as we will need to be sure the false positive rate is extremely low.

So, all going well we will have a tech based solution for at least the more obvious spam, some time next year.

Victor

Paddy, just feed it the contents of this thread: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055283046

RoundyMooney

Agreed, the people who post there are doing their bit to keep this place as spam free as possible.

There's a couple of dozen people there with a hundred posts or up, and it's a fair wager that many people just report the post, without posting on that thread. I usually do the latter tbh, and it's only lately I've started coming across spam in any quantity. The radio forum got a good few there lately.

later12

What about infracting users who post responses in blatant spam threads (i.e. do my boobs look too big in this dress?; postcount 1), inadvertently bumping the thread and encouraging more views.

The less attention these spammers get the less they might be inclined to return.

FarmerGreen

A link in a first post of a new reg might be a bit of a give away.
Successive posts in a short time span from the same person, likewise.
Obvious contenders are Ugg boots and Football streaming, so if in doubt,
dont publish until its approved by a mod.
They seem to be a bit fixated on certain phrases, so that could be handy.

Two easy measures.. No hyperlinks and mod has to approve thread for first 20 posts. Like unreg in PI.

Biggins

How about giving some addition people (currently NOT mods) just an ability to remove spam as soon as it appears - in any section.
(It could be moved to a section see-able by mods and reviewed at leisure later if need be?)
It might help solve the problem of spam staying up when there is no standard sectional mods around for a while.

For example as of 5.30/Dec 20th, this spam is still on a forum (yes, I myself reported it twice) - posted 12-12-2011, 10:51.

A few furthed trusted new "spam mods" might help shoot crap down/remove quicker!

Suryavarman

Would it be possible to make posters starting new threads pass a reCAPTCHA image?

Overheal

Boards.ie: Paddy wrote: »

We had our quarterly hack day yesterday and I decided to take a look at implementing this anti-spam technique:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_spam_filtering

Thats less exciting than what I thought a Bayesian filter would be. I expected more robots and explosions.

WIZE

In 2011, a crack commando unit was sent to Boards.ie prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Dublin underground. Today, still wanted by the Admins and Mods , they survive as soldiers of fortune.
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The Spam Police .
BRATATATATATATATATATA


Just make a Spam team until you come up with a Plan

FarmerGreen

I would just like to blow the dirty little buggers heads off.
In a socially acceptable fashion.
Its huge fun, and I am sure there are people who would be happy to help.

FarmerGreen

Biggins wrote: »

How about giving some addition people (currently NOT mods) just an ability to remove spam as soon as it appears - in any section.
A few furthed trusted new "spam mods" might help shoot crap down/remove quicker!

Yep, much quicker.
The spam lurks around for hours, zap it fast and they'll try their luck elsewhere.
The thing is, with a whore house, you have to pay for the privilege, but these guys stroll in and expect it for free.
Hugely offensive Ted.

D

I like the idea of:

User has less than 5 posts

&&

new thread started and first post contains hyper-link

=> thread must be approved by mod.

This way it minimises impact for new users yet will at least cut down on some spamming.

Raphael

A trick I've used in the past is to have a question that is obvious and easy for a person to answer, but not for a spambot - something like, "Which eye is bigger on face in the boards.ie logo" If correct answer is given, registration proceeds.

Morag

spam police, we had them, they were called smods.