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View Full Version : Operation Extreme Measures!


admin
07-03-2007, 03:07 PM
Hehe, I've declared war on spambots. Although, ultimately, it may be a losing battle, it is probably past time to take a stand.

Here's the four-pronged strategy:

1. Come up with an operation name. Done!
2. Manually approve all new user registrations. Done!
3. Try to improve the CAPCHA performance. Done!
4. New users have to answer this question when registering: "What animal is the mascot of NDSU?" Done!

Thanks to Hammersmith for all the suggestions!

In addition, we've changed the way posts are marked as new or not so let me know if there are problems. Possible symptoms include: lethargic performance and irritability.
roadwarrior
07-03-2007, 04:45 PM
It appears that all posts since about 06/24/07 are now marked as new posts.
WYOBISONMAN
07-03-2007, 06:06 PM
It appears that all posts since about 06/24/07 are now marked as new posts.


I see the same too......I had to use the "mark all posts as read" function.
Bisonguy
07-03-2007, 07:36 PM
WAR! on spambots!


Will this reduce the webcrawlers, as well?
tony
07-03-2007, 09:27 PM
It won't do anything to webcrawlers... those aren't as much of a nuisance though and they do provide some benefits (i.e. search engine stuff).
TheDoctor
07-11-2007, 03:11 AM
GET THEM Tony! ;)
sambini
07-11-2007, 04:44 AM
GET THEM Tony! ;)++++++++++++
TransAmBison
07-12-2007, 09:36 PM
Seems like Op Extreme Measures has been a complete success! Congrats to the victor!
Bison_Pride
07-19-2007, 09:46 AM
Over on my preps board we are getting about 3 spam registrations for every real registration during the slow summer months. We have had a policy of manual posting ability activations in effect since a few months after we came online, and I've went through and deleted all the spam accounts in the membership I could find. At least I know that if we have 2 thousand members that they are not all just spam accounts. It's worked very well, we have had 0 cases of spam posting.
TheDoctor
07-22-2007, 07:00 AM
Over on my preps board we are getting about 3 spam registrations for every real registration during the slow summer months. We have had a policy of manual posting ability activations in effect since a few months after we came online, and I've went through and deleted all the spam accounts in the membership I could find. At least I know that if we have 2 thousand members that they are not all just spam accounts. It's worked very well, we have had 0 cases of spam posting.

Maybe Tony can look into this. ;)
Bisonguy
07-22-2007, 04:14 PM
Operation Extreme Measures has greatly reduced, maybe even eliminated, the spam on the board.
Hammersmith
07-23-2007, 01:21 AM
Bisonville: Spam free for 22 days and counting.
Bison_Pride
07-30-2007, 10:02 AM
Tony,

I would try banning the partial email address .ru for registration, and other common foreign extensions, because many of them originate from India. That might cut down on the number of spam bots registering for accounts here and save you some time.