Recently we were just spammed a heap by two bots- I tried to delete their accounts but they kept coming back, so I've now banned their IP's.
I'm not sure how this kind of thing works-
Is it possible/ likely a few people will have the same IP?
I looked at the currently active users and no one seemed to share the IP of these spam bots.
If, by removing these bots, I've accidentally blocked a legitimate member, please try to contact me so I can fix it. If you can't access things here I have a Warseer account with the same username you may be able to contact me on.

If anyone feels like enlightening me on how the IP's and things work, please do so.

You should check if any of the forums are open to guests (where guests have full access ). Also, you may want to change the way users log in... We use phpbb 3.0 now, so we don't have any problems, but the 2.o version had the same problem. We solved it by downloading a mod which required all new members to enter a VIP code which we wrote in cyrillic on our main page, so it was easy for Serbs to read but impossible for bots.

In other words, devise some way to prevent unauthorized users from posting.

Every comp and laptop has an individual IP address.

But i agree wic Charok, maybe u shud get sum security thing.

People who're using wireless modems can end up having the same ip addresses. We used to have an "only in certain forums"

In all honesty i think it's a coincedence that we got hit by two seperate spammers at the one time. If it's needed i'm willing to do more work deleting the spambots if i can get the powers? at the moment i'm catching and prohibiting further posting when i can but it's little against a mighty horde

I'll have to see what SeanyPrawny thinks of increasing your power, Nightstalker. It seems a little wrong for the just promoted guy to start promoting others already.

I've been vaguely looking for one of those filter things- Charok, would you be able to give me more details on how the other forum went about it? What is phpbb? I really know nothing about this stuff...

Thanks for the assistance.

Well, our forum is powered by phpbb engine... THey have a good system od mods, where you put only the needed things into your forum. Also, an understandable help page.

Check this out... It's probably similar for your engine

BB antispam

just promote all kindred leaders :) muahahahhahahah, but looks like it is getting better

I think it wud be a better idea just to have all the kindred leaders and members actually online more frequently. that way we'd spot spammers sooner.

i got the spammers as they were posting but by the time i was done they'd posted a couple of times. Which considering i was working yesterday wasn't too bad

I don't think that manual removal of bots is a good solution. I had a huge rush of them a couple of years ago (when I was still inexperienced), and I ended up with 1000 or so spam-posts. I'm trying to find a way for the process to be automatic.

Found something on invision forum:
SPAMBOT HELP

Thanks everyone-
I found that too Charok, but haven't yet had a chance to look into it in more detail. Validation by a mod seems a bit tto time consuming, especially as we already have heaps of bots filtered out because they don't validate their own e-mail, and I'm not sure how you'd tell the difference between a human application and a spam bot application.

We could try the method of us validating the members as between us they should get done rather quickly. THe only way we could tell the bots from the boring average joes :wink: is by e-mailing the applicants.

Hmm... that may work, but seems quite awkward and time consuming. Things are quite for now- maybe we can consider it if we get hit hard again.

Right I've just had to delete some rather unsavoury things and I'm sick of it. As soon as I find the time I'm going to set this thing up. Can't describe how pissed off I am right now!

THE BOTS ARE BACK GRRR!!!

Why is it only the most brilliant sites get Botted? Why cant they bot some where else grrr? :<

Right the new settings are in place. Lets hope me and Geep don't missplace our eyes otherwise otherwise we won't have an new members for a while. (lol)

Any new members for a while? *looks around* ermm...

Glad to hear it though and lets hope no more of it happens.

SDETT

Hush your gums silly (lol) Aye lets pray to Isha we have seen the last of them and to Kurnous to slay any that do appear!