Bartertown.com

Hey Admins and Mods,

What's with all the spam-type ads appearing in the trade forums? XXX, Credit reports, etc.

How annoying is THAT?!?

That's what spammers do. They create a bogus account, then post all the crappola they can, until they're booted.

If you find one, copy the link from your browser bar, put it into a PM (if you want to be nice, you can use the tags to make a link out of it) and PM it to a mod or admin... I usually send mine to insidius, linrandir, or alsiaie.

I recommend you do the same.

Eric

Maybe its time to up the moderators so that we can nip this in the bud more quickly........

I know we had this discussion a while back, and someone suggested that watchdog group, but I dont know

Things seem to be getting a little much lately. Maybe 2 more moderators wouldn't hurt??

Erik

Honestly, having more moderators won't help much. You see, these advertisements are not posted by actual people. They are programed bots that ping the server from an outside source. They are completely automated and are programed to create accounts and post pre-written advertisemens on random forums. Each new account is on a dynamic IP so IP bans do not work. If we ban the IP, the bot just changes it and creates a new account with some random characters. It is impossible to ban the bots specifically, but Adam is currently writing some new php scripts to help this. Again, if you see one of these advertisements, contact one of the moderators. Please include the actual URL to the thread in your PM. Once these new scripts are completed, you should see a large decrease in spam.

lol Alsiaie, I was just coming to post this VERY thing after receiving a PM from NPD

Darn sons of motherless goats bots........

Keep up the good fight brothers, we can't let those stinking bots win.....

I'll post exact links next time

Erik

If you add the "type what you see in the box" feature at sign-up (thought it was already there though), then my understanding is that it can become an intractable problem if done correctly. If it's based on a handwriting sample and has extra garbage (random lines, dots, etc) then it's impossible to parse with a computer code. That's why handwriting recognition on PC's sucks so badly (and it doesn't ACTUALLY read your handwriting, it guesses based on context and a lot of other factors that don't apply to a completely arbitrary string).

Anyway, that should cut down on the ability to use bots to signup, I would think.

i agreed with the angle. something that forces you to type a random sequence and shows a garbled picture should cut out the automated bots.

Damn. When I was little bots were something cool. Damn you spammers for turning the object of my childhood desire against me and the good(and not so good for that matter) people of this forum.

Well, here's a quick update:

Whenever a new account is registered now an email gets sent to mods and admin. We check it out and clear it for use, or, since I am tired of those crapholes posting their garbage here, I ban the account and then nuke it.

I think I will start keeping tally with little skull icons, if I can find a nice small one online somewhere.

Blank

I used to have this REALLY COOL neon green skull & crossbones. Not too big, not too small.
It would have been perfect... Alas, I lost it in the "Great Hard Drive Crash of '05" on my old computer!
LOL

Eric

I remember that! Glad you fixed that problem, because I know you were in the middle of something like a dozen trades at the time.

Yeah.... I fixed it allright.
I bought a new computer.

Of course, I bought a DELL.... I won't even GO into the problems I had with THEM... You'd get bored before I was half done!

Still, though... the computer is nice (now), even if the free flat screen "upgrade" monitor is crap.

Of course, I reformatted the HD on the other computer, too.


Eric