Change in New User Policy

[Eaquae Legit]

Hey guys. You may have noticed by now that we have been getting an increase of spammers recently. I'd like to thank the sundry individuals who have let the mods know when they've seen spam so we can get rid of it.

Please, if you see spam, let one of us know via PM or IM. Don't reply to it, just let us know so we can remove it. Also, some "new users" have been seen with spammish links in their profiles. Again, if you notice, please let us know.

Thanks.

[Rei]

Beware of spam before it overtakes you

[hive_king]

does anyone know why we're suddenly getting the rush of spammers?

[eriador]

Popularity?

[Demosthenes]

Must be. The ways of the spammer are foreign to me... but I'm sure that popularity has something to do with it.

Thanks for the heads-up! I see some now... *blasts spammer with laser cannon*

[VelvetElvis]

does anyone know why we're suddenly getting the rush of spammers?

Because we are pretty.

[Dr. Mobius]

I think it has more to do with age than popularity. The site may have been around for years, but the phpBB version of the board has only been here for a few months. As far the spammers and bots are concerned it's a completely different entity from the previous boards, so this is a new territory for them to invade and infect.

Popularity does play a part as well, though, I think. This site has many more members than it did at the time of the first crash, and in part because of that there are many more links to this site from elsewhere on the internet than there were with the previous boards. In other words, more opportunities for the spammers to find us.

That's my speculation anyways. I don't really know enough about this stuff to really know how close to the truth it is.

[Yebra]

I'd imagine it's mostly that phpBB is more common software than the last one so spam programs are written to take advantage.

[hvm]

Hey guys. You may have noticed by now that we have been getting an increase of spammers recently. I'd like to thank the sundry individuals who have let the mods know when they've seen spam so we can get rid of it.

Please, if you see spam, let one of us know via PM or IM. Don't reply to it, just let us know so we can remove it. Also, some "new users" have been seen with spammish links in their profiles. Again, if you notice, please let us know.

Thanks.

Another board, which I used to frequent, was Colleen Doran's "A Distant Soil." It's demise started out the same way - a rather inane joke and a sort of spammish link. Someone responded, one of the regulars pointed out that the joke was a come-on, and that such messages were better ignored (see EL's quote above), but the avalanche was on its way. She eventually abandoned the forum, having shifted over to a blog.

This all became a major hazard for forum operators (not just PHPBB2) some time around last May, apparently triggered by Google's PageRank(TM) patent, whereby they give priority in reporting search results to pages with the most incoming links. Spamming seems to have gone through three phases: 1) obnoxious adolescents who like to post gross and shocking graffiti wherever they can. 2) would-be vendors who advertise their wares (viagra, xxx movies, used cars, cheap loans, ...) as widely as possible, and have moved from email lists to guest books and forums. As many as possible, preferably popular ones. 3) Google gamers, the recent fad, presumably using Google's own lists (48,000,000 items containing the phrase "PHPBB2") to enhance their visibility through appearance on the first page of results from any given search.

The PHPBB gang has been somewhat slow in responding to this, although there is a promised PHPBB3 on the horizon. One can read their forum to get an idea of what they are going through. And of course, some solutions which seem simple at first sight don't look so good after some thought - for instance, banning all *@*.biz, given that some very few legitimate registrants might actually have such an address.

I suppose that it is remarkable that the Philotic Web has not been so highly burdened; I have supposed that this was due to the vigilance of administrators and moderators. Using blurry numbers (CAPTCHE's) worked for a while, but seems to have been surmounted - there are various ways, including hiring cheap human labor.

Indeed, in my regular e-mail I have been getting spam offering to flood the internet with messages of my choice (for a fee, of course), and announcements of programs which I could use to do this dirty work myself. Those people are presumably making money, whereas the nigerian orphans and Britney Spears voyeurs are more like the beggar with the tin cup standing on the street corner, awaiting the sporadic dime.

This plague will probably only go away when registrants can no longer post either arbitrary messages or any linkages, and then time elapses for the word to spread that forum flooding is no longer productive. Meanwhile we can hope that PHPBB3 will meet this requirement. For my part, I am killing up to a dozen registrations a day by hand. We changed the name of one forum as a test; it took a few days for the Googlebots to find it, and now after a week or so, the faux registrants are beginning to trickle back.

I couldn't access Philotic Web for a couple of days; now it's back. Coincidence?

[zeroguy]

Perhaps a "rel=nofollow" addition to PHPBB could help?

And PageRank has always partially depended on incoming links; I don't see what the past May has to do with it.

[Eaquae Legit]

Just want to thank Rei for a quick heads-up tonight.

[Eaquae Legit]

By now, most of you have noticed the plague of spam. For the time being, new accounts must be activated by admin. This is in effect until further notice.

[Papa Moose]

You know, when I changed my e-mail address and then needed to be re-activated, it was kinda hard to figure out how to get in touch with you guys. Y'know, just sayin'. There could maybe be a contact link somewhere (or if there is, it could be easier to find). Or, of course, I could just be kinda slow, and in that case I appreciate you putting up with me. *smile*

--Pop