Spam bots?

[Mermaid Kane]

Is there any way we could add a Captcha to shake off these spam bots? Maybe at registration? Not sure if this forum platform can do that, though.

[Winged Mermaid]

We have that, and we have anti spam software to auto moderate the first several posts users make. I bumped up the settings last night, then woke up to 4x as many spammers. I think I'm going to have to black list some words for posting for a while. I hate to black list "live stream" but this is getting ridiculous. We get hit by a wall of spammers every now and then, and it's never fun :/

[Mermaid Kane]

We have that, and we have anti spam software to auto moderate the first several posts users make. I bumped up the settings last night, then woke up to 4x as many spammers. I think I'm going to have to black list some words for posting for a while. I hate to black list "live stream" but this is getting ridiculous. We get hit by a wall of spammers every now and then, and it's never fun :/

I really do wonder what summons these hoards of bots haha.
I hope they scatter soon.

[Slim]

Well.....these bots have artificial intelligence and like some mermaids, they hope to become a real human. The programmers should really remove the Pinocchio movie out of their database O:-) Other than that, I have no clue.


I really do wonder what summons these hoards of bots haha.
I hope they scatter soon.

[Winged Mermaid]

I'm really sorry about the spammers, guys. I'm trying my best to keep them out. I upped the settings on the spam software. Thus even though the bots are posting, the hyperlinks they're posting don't show up- just the text. I also just added a registration question on top of the reCAPTCHA, since apparently reCAPTCHA isn't doing much anymore. Hopefully that will cut down on the numbers, at least.

I was on vacation and still checking my email regularly to see any spam reports and remove the spammers. Even when I was in a place with no cell signal for 3 days, I went to the one place I could find with crappy wifi, daily, to try and keep on top of it. I'm just as sick of them as you guys are! Everyone who manages a forum will tell you that it's a fight trying to keep these guys out. Off to go look at the recent registrations to see if there are any obvious bots that have registered, and delete them.

[Slim]

I wonder if all the bots email address have similar ending like @yahoo.com as all Yahoo accounts were compressed according to a recent news report on their finding of the Yahoo hack.

[Khaleesi Daenerys]

Yahoo got hacked? Ugh. :doh: I have to go check my yahoo account now lol.
I was reporting spam for a while but there was just so much of it so often. Some of it was really weird too like the one sentence post saying "they took my baby" or something of the like. That post was really disturbing and odd with no hyperlink they just wanted to post that, weird. :confused::p

[Winged Mermaid]

Hacks and spam bots are two different things that aren't connected. Hackers are after email and passwords so they can get in and get any secure or private info they can. Spam bots automatically make throw away email accounts, then register on a bunch of forums using that email to post spam. Some are human assisted but most of it is automated. Just FYI :)
Actually, most spammers use gmail addresses. Which I find funny, because Google developed the reCAPTCHA, which apparently is cracked now anyways. Great job, Google :P

Anyway, I was able to go through the users that registered since the first of the month, and check the emails with the spammer database, and banned a bunch of them before they could even post on here. Hopefully we'll see a lot less now- fingers crossed!

[NomadicMermaid]

Thank you so much for all you do!

[Mermaid Kane]

Anyway, I was able to go through the users that registered since the first of the month, and check the emails with the spammer database, and banned a bunch of them before they could even post on here. Hopefully we'll see a lot less now- fingers crossed!
Yay! Lets hope it works.

[MermaidMermeron(Cameron)]

Good luck on finding all the spam bots [emoji170][emoji171][emoji172]

Sent from my [device_name] using MerNetwork mobile app

[Merman Storm]

"Which I find funny, because Google developed the reCAPTCHA, which apparently is cracked now anyways. Great job, Google :P"

Its hardly their fault. There are companies that use workers to solve the reCAPTCHA as a service, for a fraction of a cent per solve. These workers are in some country where they are happy to be making even that much money. The spambot automatically sends every reCAPTHA to the service.