Page 1 of 1

Damn Bots

Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 4:38 pm
by Nichalus
We seem to be having a slew of Bots lately. The Cane Hammer has been swinging more than usual, and my joints are starting to hurt.

I'm going to sticky this thread, so please if you see anymore before I do, leave a post here and I'll get notified and take them down.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 10:05 am
by Mir

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:52 am
by Pryde
I had forgotten about that thread. Funny it should get "revived" by a bot. :P

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2018 5:26 pm
by Cadden

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 9:03 am
by Mir

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:43 am
by Cadden
Done.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 11:35 am
by Mir

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 6:29 am
by Mir

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 6:41 am
by Nichalus
Taken care of. :)

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2018 9:53 am
by Nichalus
Two Spammers in two days. Seems to be a resurgence of them lately. Reply here if you see one, and I'll take care of it.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:35 am
by Mir

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:42 am
by Pryde
Those are probably the most positive bots I've ever seen. I kind of want to take both of those posts and put them on one of those positive reinforcement poster things. Especially the last one.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 6:17 pm
by Nichalus
The Gleason one, I took care of a while back. Lizie, while so positive, is now positively gone. *smirk*

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2019 7:53 am
by Mir
We need a bunch taken care of in the MBT and the Gen OOC.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:08 pm
by Nichalus
Sorry for the delay. Internet was on the fritz. Should be all taken care of now.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2019 6:10 am
by Mir
Much obliged, abuelo.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:58 pm
by goober
I just added reCAPTCHA to the forum. Hopefully that will help keep the bots away.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Sat Apr 13, 2019 4:34 am
by Nichalus
NICE! I've been banhammering an average of 2 a week for quite a while now. Thanks...and good to see you...Goober!

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2019 5:31 am
by goober
Ugh, I can't tell if it's better or worse. I saw two spam posts this morning.

Another thing we could do is restrict the boards that new users can post to. That would make it easy to spot the bots but slightly inconvenient for legitimate users. Definitely more work for the moderators. But I'm not sure how to keep the bots away, other than that.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2019 6:00 am
by goober
Okay, I also installed the Akismet anti-spam plugin, and set it to add potential spammers to the "Newly registered users" group by default. That will prevent them from posting without moderation -- but it should also prevent those posts from going through as Akismet has a large database of potential spam to match against.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2019 7:18 am
by Nichalus
Is there a way to make it where anyone signing up must be approved by the Mods before they can post anything/anywhere?

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2019 7:50 am
by goober
Yes, we can make it so that the first post always go to the moderator queue and then you can manually approve. Subsequent posts will be allowed. We can even make that number > 1 so that the first n posts must be approved.

It does look like Akismet did its job so maybe this is OK for now. I see one comment in the moderator queue. Unfortunately it does _seem_ that more bots are making it through the registration now with the reCAPTCHA (I figured it would be better...I guess not!) I'm going to try out the Q&A check instead and see if that works better.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2019 9:36 am
by Mir
We're down so many people that I don't think restricting new users will be that much of an issue.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2019 10:42 am
by goober
So far not a single user has registered since I enabled the Q&A, and the Akismet plugin stopped the only other bot that registered before I made the change. Hopefully I didn't make the Q&A too difficult, but I think it's pretty easy! Hopefully that'll be the end of the bots.. If not, I'll turn on the post restriction feature.

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2019 2:54 pm
by Nichalus
Thank you Goob! My Banhammer will need to be replaced, its kinda wore down and I can't seem to get all the blood off of it. Can I file that as a job related expense, or will the SWE Admins furnish a new one? *smirk*

Re: Damn Bots

Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2019 2:59 pm
by goober
Haha, let's hope you don't need a new one but if you do you can submit the expense to Neuge! Maybe that'll get him to answer my emails... :rolleyes: