Disembodied wrote:I think the trick these bots try to pull is they set up a profile with a random but innocent website: then they come back at a later date and edit the profile to point somewhere else.
If that is the case, they certainly work hard for their money - or at least multitask a lot.
The account in question was logged on for over an hour after creation (or came back on an hour after, which to me seems a strange way of doing it; if you're gonna cloak for a bit, why just an hour?), and given the fact that the same username was killed on the previous page, why would you try any cleverness at all? Why not just register and immediately spread your spam? Maybe I'm just assigning too much detail-orientedness to it. After all, it may it may have gotten killed so quickly the first time that aegidian.org didn't get ticked off on the list.
Anyway, about 3.5 weeks ago,
Thargoid wrote:We have a hack on aforementioned other board that new user posts do not appear until approved by a moderator or admin (and a maximum of I think 6 posts can be made per account and held in the approval queue).
It adds a little extra work for we mods, but it works very well in stopping normal users from seeing any kind of spam (presuming we don't approve something or someone by mistake of course). And once a post has been approved for a given account, then no further approval is needed for subsequent posts.
I would recommend it as a consideration if some new security measures are desired.
With the steady influx of spambots we've been seeing since the switch to v3, I think something like this should be seriously considered. With the majority of people here being in timezones close to GMT, there is a real possibility of undesired posts staying up for 6-8 hours before anyone with a katana could get to them. The only real downside I can see to filtering first post through a human being (aside from the work involved) is the same geographical spread; posts might sit for a few hours before getting cleared. On the other hand, if there's no one to let it through, there's also likely to be no one around to reply, anyway. (And if someone gets offended when they get a message along the lines of "In order to ensure a spam-free board, your first message has been placed in a queue awaiting approval by one of our administrators. As most of them live in Europe, this may take a few hours if you posted during European nighttime. We apologize for any inconvenience." I, for one, quite frankly think they'd be better off staying on the
unfriendly side of Riedquat.) I've no clue how the inner workings of the bb function, but if it's possible to give admin powers limited to just 1st post approval, we might find someone to cover the other timezones without getting into a situation with too many cooks.
"Actually this is a common misconception... I do *not* in fact have a lot of time on my hands at all! I just have a very very very very bad sense of priorities."
--Dean C Engelhardt
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