Spam, spam, spam

[dcuny]

I removed user lsx008892 and all their spam posts.

[sascha]

Oh yeah, three cheers for GD CAPTCHA wave distortion

I've just removed gracyna and the message he (or it) posted to the IRTC dance topic:

the 8th grade dance is coming up! One of my best friends (who is a guys. and we are just friends) asked me to the dance. i felt a little pressured but said yes, but only as friends. Laterrrr i found out that he likes me (more than friends). so its kinda awquard now. so i kinda dont wanna go with him. HELP

The thing is: I don't get it. Are these bots checking out whether a forum is moderated and how long it takes until someone removes their nonsense or am I missing something? its kinda awquard

[pndragon]

removed 4 posts by gold5917

[sascha]

Thanks!

I've banned two new users.

[pndragon]

Banned: 1 user
Deleted: 2 posts

[sascha]

Thanks a lot!

I've turned on email-verification again (I actually don't know why I turned that off in the first place), banned another user, and since we've had a few gold<4-digit-number> users I've disallowed any username starting with gold.

Does anyone know the purpose of these bots and their "Hello my friend", "That's interesting", etc. messages?

[dcuny]

Does anyone know the purpose of these bots and their "Hello my friend", "That's interesting", etc. messages?

I assume they're used to see if a forum is active.

[pndragon]

Does anyone know the purpose of these bots and their "Hello my friend", "That's interesting", etc. messages?

It doesn't mean anything all by itself. It's purpose is to distract you from the apparently empty post. I myself was curious about why the
ellipses were at the bottom of the post all by themselves. I selected the whole post (because I am a naturally suspicious character, I suppose) and this is what is found:

filth
trash
smut
my eyes are burning

etc.

--- Jim

[dcuny]

Removed Waojoke4122 and and Maziro9305, both posting massive random posts with signatures advertising "wow gold".

[dcuny]

Removed faxtalantatte, spambot posting porn links.

[sascha]

Thanks, David!

I've got all this spam from the forum in my email inbox and just wanted to delete the messages, but they were already gone

[dcuny]

Removed spambot danielkem.

[dcuny]

Removed spambot flowrencemary. It appears to search for forums that mention "foot" and links back to a podiatry website.

[dcuny]

Removed user abeyhani. Appears to be keyword-based spambot that found the right thread by topic (pointed back to a stickfigure animation program). Sort of clever, but still spam.

[pndragon]

The bots are getting trickier

I just erased a post that looked like it been picked up from an SDS board and reposted here---after it had been salted with links.

I guess we should be thankful that none of the links were to porn sites.



Jim