New steps in our war on spambots!

[Hobbit]

Hello everyone,

Just a quick update for you on our latest steps to eliminate the spambot problem. Today I added two new plugins which will hopefully stop the problem completely.

The first is a brand new product to weed out spam bot registrations. Our current(previous) one obviously does not do a very good job and it caused a lot of false rejections and denied legitimate users from registering. The new plugin should weed out the bots better and not deny humans like it has been doing.

The second one should stop any posts and PMs from spambots that get though. I will not post the specifics of the thresholds but newly registered users will not be able to post links or send PMs to anyone other than a mod or and admin until they reach a certain (small) number of posts.


Hopefully this will be the end of our spambot problems, but keep reporting them if you see them!

Cheers
SRL Staff.

[Silentcore]

Thank you man. Hopefully that stops them a bit..

[Physic]

Wouldn't this prevent real people with few posts from asking other PMing other members for help? @Hobbit;

[Hobbit]

Its a very small number of posts required and if they are PMing anyone other than an admin (ie account issues) before having that number of posts then they did not research their issue properly enough.

[King]

I like this, thankyou<3

[Physic]

Its a very small number of posts required and if they are PMing anyone other than an admin (ie account issues) before having that number of posts then they did not research their issue properly enough.

I guess and they could also post on a thread I guess.. Anyways, do you know where @YoHoJo; is? been trying to contact him via SMS and via skype. No response @Hobbit;

[King]

I guess and they could also post on a thread I guess.. Anyways, do you know where @YoHoJo; is? been trying to contact him via SMS and via skype. No response @Hobbit;

I talked to him like two days ago, he might just be busy like me

[senrath]

Does this only apply to accounts made after the change? Because I got a PM from someone with no posts a few minutes ago.

[Hobbit]

PM me a screenie please @senrath;

[Sin]

Well done man

[senrath]

PM me a screenie please @senrath;

PM Sent.

[Hobbit]

Well at least it's trying... hmmmmmmmmmmm

(From a freshly registered test account)

[senrath]

Does it maybe count SSRL as staff since we have minimod powers?

[Hobbit]

Nope, problem solved. Just had to make a minor edit to the plugin to reflect some changes for vb4.2.X

[YoHoJo]

Nope, problem solved. Just had to make a minor edit to the plugin to reflect some changes for vb4.2.X

Yeah great, put me first on the list :X


Good work, let's hope this works well so Staff can use their time and efforts on important things!!!

[Hobbit]

Yeah great, put me first on the list :X
[IMG.]http://media.tumblr.com/fe04e7c18e405b366422c6ff85558afa/tumblr_inline_ml3l6ub3Z11qz4rgp.jpg[/IMG]

Good work, let's hope this works well so Staff can use their time and efforts on important things!!!

I didn't do it It did it by user id within usergroups
I'll probably modify it to link to forum leaders page instead of listing names.

[senrath]

Glad things got sorted out.

[Justin]

Poor YoHoJo, Going to get ALL the PM's now haha

[YoHoJo]

http://villavu.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101868
D:
Oh well, only got though since it didn't have any actual URLs/hyperlinks, can't get em all but it will surely help!

[Justin]

http://villavu.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101868
D:
Oh well, only got though since it didn't have any actual URLs/hyperlinks, can't get em all but it will surely help!

The plugin removed the links

[YoHoJo]

The plugin removed the links

>Smart enough to remove links from suspected spambot.
>Not smart enough to stop the post from getting through and banning him?

(Yeah I can see the argument that this would then ban any new users posting links) but:
I thought it would also give this message:
and replace PMs with 'Post Links', that would be nice yes?

[Hobbit]

The denial of sending pm's and posting links, etc is a permissions plugin not and anti-spam one. The new anti-spam one is picking up threads left right and centre. Needs a little work on blocking registrations but it is moderating almost every single thread so far, and this is the first day of the beta...

[Neznam]

Sweet! Looking forward to a bot free environment, haha no but seriously great addition.

[StickToTheScript]

This is going to be much nicer. Im kinda happy you did this. Thanks guys!

[Neznam]

Well still seeing them come through, they just don't post links but do the whole " . c0m" thing.

Saw 2 threads already. Banned fairly quick.