Recent Spam - Updated 2/8/09 - Is your IP Blocked?

[Admin]

Updated 2/24/09

Thanks everyone for the patience. We have gone a good year or so without any MAJOR automated spam and all of the sudden, it's back on the rise. Apparently the Spammers are having some sort of Conference this past week and they are all trying out the latest techniques to get by these bulletin board software security features. This is not a joke, it's hard to believe that spammers have a conference, but they apparently do. Because almost all versions of bulletin board software have been under attack this past week.

Because of the massive attacks, most of the attacks that I saw were originating from 2 major networks. I decided to block all traffic to those subnets and it apparently blocked several of you as well. I will remove those blocks, but need your help. I literally have over 100,000 IP addresses and domains blocked due to spamming, open proxies & etc. and I don't want to remove all of them. I only want to remove the users that are actually legit. So, if you are blocked, I need you to go to this website (http://www.ipchicken.com). When you go to that website, it will tell you what your IP address of your modem. Please either post it in this thread or send me a PM with the IP address and I will remove it when I get a chance later this evening.

Once again, sorry for the inconvenience.

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/5/09

You've done a fine job shutting down the spammers.

[Admin]

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/5/09

You've done a fine job shutting down the spammers.

Not sure if you were being sarcastic or not since a few spammers did sneak in. But, the good news is that my anti-spam adjustments have been catching other automated spam bots. I also removed the few that got posted after my last update and saw a pattern that's able to be blocked. I am making a few more adjustments and hopefully soon, everything will be back and working without spammers.

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/5/09

No sarcasm, thank you for your diligence in keeping this site clean.

[Admin]

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/6/09

Apparently some of the spammers are still sneaking through. It's not many but somehow they are getting through every now and then. It looks like most of the porn type spam has been successfully blocked, but the foreign hieroglyphic type spam keeps sneaking through. We are working on a fix, so be patient if you see some.

[thebes20]

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/5/09

I deleted a porn post on the college soccer board today. It looked like the other one with the 4 photos, was masked by using a name like markgeorge or something like that.

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/6/09

quote="Admin"]Apparently some of the spammers are still sneaking through. It's not many but somehow they are getting through every now and then. It looks like most of the porn type spam has been successfully blocked, but the foreign hieroglyphic type spam keeps sneaking through. We are working on a fix, so be patient if you see some.[/quote]

I was blocked and there was definitely no Spam coming from my IP address. I e-mailed admin already and hae not received a response. How does it get fixed?

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/5/09

I deleted a porn post on the college soccer board today. It looked like the other one with the 4 photos, was masked by using a name like markgeorge or something like that.

theres a porn post in florida

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/6/09

quote=\"Admin\"]Apparently some of the spammers are still sneaking through. It\'s not many but somehow they are getting through every now and then. It looks like most of the porn type spam has been successfully blocked, but the foreign hieroglyphic type spam keeps sneaking through. We are working on a fix, so be patient if you see some.

I was blocked and there was definitely no Spam coming from my IP address. I e-mailed admin already and hae not received a response. How does it get fixed?[/quote]

Same here, no spam coming from my IP and got blocked, I email admin and nothing..... I think the whole verizon fios network has been blocked.

[Admin]

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/6/09 - Is your IP Blocked?

I edited my original post above, so please re-read that if you are being blocked from our site on how to fix it.

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/6/09 - Is your IP Blocked?

I edited my original post above, so please re-read that if you are being blocked from our site on how to fix it.

theres a porn post in florida

[Admin]

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/6/09 - Is your IP Blocked?

I cleaned out the porn posts and tried changing the confirmation code settings when posting as a guest to make it harder for the spambots to read. Sorry if it's more difficult for the guest posters to read. But, remember if you register for an account, you can bypass that completely.

[thebes20]

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/6/09 - Is your IP Blocked?

I cleaned out the porn posts and tried changing the confirmation code settings when posting as a guest to make it harder for the spambots to read. Sorry if it's more difficult for the guest posters to read. But, remember if you register for an account, you can bypass that completely.

Admin, the settings for the guests are hard to read.

[Admin]

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/6/09 - Is your IP Blocked?

Thanks. I am aware. I was testing to see if the bots are getting through by using image recognition and bypassing the CAPTCHA code. By adding the extra "noise" around the letters, it makes it almost impossible to read for the bots and that confirmed my suspicions by seeing the spam drop to only 2 posts in a 48 hour period instead of 20 every hour. Unfortunately, it made it harder for guests to posts as well. I am going to reduce the amount of "noise" to a lower level and try to balance it between too hard for spambots to read but easy enough for humans. This should decrease the amount of spam drastically. But in order to find the best balance, I will be slowly decreasing the noise every few hours until I find a balance that works good for everyone.

Re: Recent Spam - Updated 2/8/09 - Is your IP Blocked?

My ip is blocked,please unblock it, currently is 96.228.136.xxx but it appears that the whole 96.xxx.xxx.xxx is blocked as I changed my ip yesterday, like I said before, that\'s probably the whole verizon fios network on the Tampa Bay Area and I\'m sure a lot of legit users are being blocked.