Administrator Scott =) Posted July 18, 2018 Administrator Share Posted July 18, 2018 Due to the recent spike in spam activity, we've made an update to the boards that hides posts from new members until a moderator has reviewed and approved them. Once a moderator has approved a post by someone, that person will be able to post freely from that point forward, without a moderator needing to intervene. Good News: That means you shouldn't see any more Korean / Chinese / etc spam threads! Bad News: Making legitimate new users wait to have their posts published isn't our favorite thing in the world. We're working on other solutions to prevent robots from creating accounts / make posts at all, but those updates will take longer to get done. Once they're done though, we should be able to remove the restriction on new members and put things back the way they were before Thanks for your patience and for doing such a good job of reporting the spammers to us! Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.Mcknowitall Posted July 18, 2018 Share Posted July 18, 2018 2 minutes ago, Scott =) said: Due to the recent spike in spam activity, we've made an update to the boards that hides posts from new members until a moderator has reviewed and approved them. Once a moderator has approved a post by someone, that person will be able to post freely from that point forward, without a moderator needing to intervene. Good News: That means you shouldn't see any more Korean / Chinese / etc spam threads! Bad News: Making legitimate new users wait to have their posts published isn't our favorite thing in the world. We're working on other solutions to prevent robots from creating accounts / make posts at all, but those updates will take longer to get done. Once they're done though, we should be able to remove the restriction on new members and put things back the way they were before Thanks for your patience and for doing such a good job of reporting the spammers to us! Scott Thank You, and I am always available to offer my negotiation skills in these trying times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Scott =) Posted July 18, 2018 Author Administrator Share Posted July 18, 2018 Note: You could still see spam thread(s) if a spammer created an account in the past and has already made other posts with it. Possible, but unlikely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
revat Posted July 18, 2018 Share Posted July 18, 2018 is there a way you could make a new member jump through a few hoops to prove they are a person (like the picture tests or whatever) or type in some weird characters they see on the screen before they're even allowed to make an account? I don't know if that will help depending on the type of spammer, just throwing it out there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Scott =) Posted July 18, 2018 Author Administrator Share Posted July 18, 2018 Yes, that's one of the options we're exploring The delicate part is making sure that those types of obstacles aren't too hard for real people. Those puzzles can lead to a lot of frustration / complaints / etc, but newer versions of the technology are better and could make that a non-issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
707comics Posted July 18, 2018 Share Posted July 18, 2018 https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/v3beta.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidTheDavid Posted July 19, 2018 Share Posted July 19, 2018 I work for a digital games publishers, and bots routinely defeat recpatcha and other measures. We rely on these tools, but also on manual approval. It’s a real p.i.t.a. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffro. Posted July 19, 2018 Share Posted July 19, 2018 (edited) Eventually the bots will attain AI and then we're all doomed to a flood of fake diploma's, IDs, male enhancement products, and cheap british kitchens Edited July 19, 2018 by Jerkfro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlowUpTheMoon Posted July 19, 2018 Share Posted July 19, 2018 I wonder how this change will affect Stu... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeadOne Posted July 19, 2018 Share Posted July 19, 2018 1 hour ago, Jerkfro said: fake diploma's, IDs, male enhancement products, and cheap british kitchens Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lizards2 Posted July 20, 2018 Share Posted July 20, 2018 On 7/18/2018 at 8:59 AM, revat said: is there a way you could make a new member jump through a few hoops to prove they are a person (like the picture tests or whatever) or type in some weird characters they see on the screen before they're even allowed to make an account? I don't know if that will help depending on the type of spammer, just throwing it out there. alexgross.com and rjpb 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Idaknow Posted July 29, 2018 Share Posted July 29, 2018 On 7/19/2018 at 8:07 AM, Jerkfro said: Eventually the bots will attain AI and then we're all doomed to a flood of fake diploma's, IDs, male enhancement products, and cheap british kitchens It's funny cause its TRUE!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Scott =) Posted August 8, 2018 Author Administrator Share Posted August 8, 2018 Update: We made some adjustments late last week: Posts by new members will show up immediately. They no longer require moderator approval. Members cannot use the chat boards until their email address is verified. This mainly applies to new members, but would also apply to existing members who update their email address on file. New members can only post 3 times in the first 24 hours after initially visiting the boards. So far, so good. So no Captcha for now If we see spammer activity spike back up again, we'll consider additional measures to help keep them at bay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gotham Kid Posted August 18, 2018 Share Posted August 18, 2018 They're back ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joecgcmaniac Posted August 18, 2018 Share Posted August 18, 2018 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cgcmod8 Posted August 18, 2018 Share Posted August 18, 2018 I have banned some. Please report any scammers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gotham Kid Posted August 18, 2018 Share Posted August 18, 2018 (edited) 15 minutes ago, cgcmod8 said: I have banned some. Please report any scammers. There are still a whole bunch of threads remaining in several Forums... Edited August 18, 2018 by Gotham Kid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator Scott =) Posted August 18, 2018 Author Administrator Share Posted August 18, 2018 3 hours ago, Gotham Kid said: They're back ! Thanks for the heads up! They're banned and their threads are now hidden. I've also fixed an issue in the admin settings that was allowing new users to post 5 times in the first day instead of 3. They'll now only be able to post 3 times. The spammers picked a good time to show back up. Ordinarily, moderators can ban a user and a background process will automatically hide their content a few minutes later. Unfortunately, there's a large background process running (search index) that will prevent any other process from running until it's done. It should be done in about 2 days. That means that moderators need to ban each user and also manually hide each thread in order for the content to disappear promptly. As you might imagine, this makes the process more tedious for moderators. We'll continue to monitor this, and evaluate whether we should reinstate admin approval for posts from new users or add some other protection. Thanks everyone for your patience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gotham Kid Posted August 19, 2018 Share Posted August 19, 2018 (edited) They keep coming back. Reported a few today already. Edited August 19, 2018 by Gotham Kid Sqeggs 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockMyAmadeus Posted August 20, 2018 Share Posted August 20, 2018 I'm excited for this new opportunity at finer Australian universities. SerialGrape and Octavius 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
