The Bots are Coming!!! Watch for them!!

[LinkHunter]

I'm sure by now that you have noticed members in forums, maybe even here, that appear to be a regular member that go to an Introduce Yourself thread and post a Human managed post, but then all of a sudden this member is making posts to mostly threads in the Community and Introduction threads that are pointless, short posts which should flag you that it is a Bot!!

Here are a few things that I found to find them quick!

1. The avatar they use is mostly a Clip Image of a female that is way too nice to be a regular self image!

2. They place either a sig link of 2 Pharmacy type Junk sites, or link their post to a Blogger site that sells the same!

3. 80% of the posts are the same wording after the first 5-15 posts!

If you see any of these things in whatever forum you are a member in, contact the Admin or a board Moderator immediately!! :Spammer:

 

[temi]

Nice post GH,
I am on the look out for this, in addition to keeping a vigilant look out, I remove accounts that have been inactive for over six months, because some people (real people not bots) go from forum to forum, post enough to have signature added to their profile and after that you never see them again... seen one person do this in 3 of my forums.

 

[gkd_uk]

Thanks for letting us know LH

 

[LinkHunter]

Well it just started for me but I am going to wait until they Human Post 15 posts or so and then ban!! Maybe they will get frustrated that way!! We will see!!

It's really sickening that we have to watch out for this sort of thing!!! Booooo!!!!

 

[Meti]

It's easy to find spammers As a previous, experienced forum owner, it isin't such a hard work, though they can be very disturbing.

Here's a tip for you guys, do a G search on the complete title -- the post should appear on several forums

Meti

 

[ctbo]

Ive never seen this activity on a vBulletin forum. Personaly I have almost 0 bot problems since using vBulletin.

 

[temi]

How long have you use vB?

 

[ctbo]

How long have you use vB?

I switched to vB in Jan07... with phpBB I had huge problems with bots.

 

[temi]

vB handles bots far better than phpBB, this forum used to be phpBB as well till I got feed up with the bots and spammers

 

[Meti]

phpBB is a opensource platform, and free and powers a large amount of forums, now it is quite obvious that these spammers target this platform more than vB.

I would strongly advise you all to create or modify your bulletin platforms, and add a human verification captcha system, for example, a question & answer field would be a great addition and would stop spam bots!

- Meti

 

[temi]

Also with vB there are people working on your behalf to fix problem when it arises.. you do not have to spend hours and hours looking for a good patch for a problem

 

[Meti]

Yeah, we had horrible problems with phpBB. Now we're on vB, and - whilst not 100% secure - is a lot less spammy accounts created than normal!

vB is one of the largest forum platforms available, I don't see why you say vB isin't secure enough, phpBB IMO is not secure.

- Meti

 

[temi]

vb is not perfect (though compared with phpBB its perfect) but the beauty of vB is that immediately a hole is spotted, withing 24 hours they will rollout a patch for it and notify you by email to upgrade.

 

[Meti]

Yes, you also forgot to mention that they have a excellent news feature on the main page of the adminCP, that allows you as a board administrator to make sure your vB is upto date and there's not any new patches.

Regards,
Meti