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Spam Bot Situation - Level: Ridiculous

Spam Bot Situation - Level: Ridiculous

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Jul 9, 2019, 10:5507/09/19
02/22/19
373

Spam Bot Situation - Level: Ridiculous

Hey @Plarium representative!

Have you had a look at the Game Discussion forum lately? There's 9.5! (nine and a half!!!!) pages of chinese spam bot topics, pretty much all of them dating from today (2019-07-09) - Are you ever going to address these issues? For us players, it doesn't feel that way (seeing that also past page 9, there's more of this sh**...).


Yours sincerely,

a very annoyed forum user.

Views
2k
Comments
20
Comments
Jul 10, 2019, 07:2407/10/19
03/04/19
77
Bump for relevance (from page 11).
Jul 10, 2019, 09:4107/10/19
03/05/19
12

It shouldn't be too hard to actually block keywords like RACC55.com or MA892.net. Starting off with that and in addition do some "I am no robot" stuff, like guessing pictures etc to keep those bot shit heads out of this forum.

Greetings 

Jul 10, 2019, 12:0107/10/19
05/16/19
17
Much needed bump. The forum has descended into farce.
Jul 10, 2019, 13:0007/10/19
06/07/19
227
MadCo0kie said:

Yours sincerely,

a very annoyed forum user.

*users
Jul 12, 2019, 09:3107/12/19
02/22/19
373
bump
MariusAdmin
Jul 12, 2019, 11:5007/12/19
09/04/17
2688

Hey there.


We're handling the situation right now. Sadly, these do not seem to be bots, but rather actual people - at least according to what I've been told. We are looking for other options to ensure the forum remains clean of spam without accidentally banning real players.
Jul 14, 2019, 14:0407/14/19
03/23/19
94

bump from page 6!!


This gets out of hand every single day. maybe think about a fix like:


when you make a account  just take posting away until u make 5 or so replies. then none of these spammers get on the main page. because if they spam 5 replies u can check it and ban before this shit takes over everything!!!


bye :)

Jul 14, 2019, 15:2207/14/19
02/12/19
56
Bump
Jul 14, 2019, 15:5407/14/19
07/13/19
8
Marius said:

Hey there.


We're handling the situation right now. Sadly, these do not seem to be bots, but rather actual people - at least according to what I've been told. We are looking for other options to ensure the forum remains clean of spam without accidentally banning real players.
Like i mention in my post , now as you said accidentally you could banning some one instead of real spam , i have been banned on my main account for spam apparently , just by making 4 posts ? , obviously me and mr Admin have a different way of understanding spam . However mr Admin dont even answer for my msg for 4 days now.
Jul 14, 2019, 17:3707/14/19
05/16/19
546

Marius said:


Hey there.


We're handling the situation right now. Sadly, these do not seem to be bots, but rather actual people - at least according to what I've been told. We are looking for other options to ensure the forum remains clean of spam without accidentally banning real players.

How is CAPTCHA not solving the problem???  Are you saying they are real people because they are fulfilling CAPTCHA and still ending up on here?


I am pretty well versed in computer programming.  All you guys need to do is have your forum pick out certain keywords to filter threads from being posted, or certain keywords being used in conjunction with one another.  I am sure there are some frequently used keywords, like "sale" "selling" "buy" "accounts" or something along those lines.


I don't see how you guys are having such difficulty filtering those spammers out.  It should be a VERY easy fix.  Even if they are actual people and passing CAPTCHA, you set up those filters and problem solved.
Jul 15, 2019, 06:3307/15/19
04/26/19
4
I came to forum to post about the shop refreshing and stilling my gems and all i see is spam Chinese in forums. And what's with the gem bug they say its fixed but its not 
Jul 15, 2019, 09:3207/15/19
Jul 15, 2019, 09:38(edited)
03/23/19
94
Bump. get this shit outta here!!!
Jul 15, 2019, 09:5107/15/19
03/23/19
94
5min later it's all spam again.....
Jul 15, 2019, 10:0707/15/19
07/13/19
8
I think i'll be done with this forum as nothing happening towards spam , admin and all others dont even bother to reply to my msg's , non of them seems to do anything and they still get payed lol outrages  
MariusAdmin
Jul 15, 2019, 11:2407/15/19
09/04/17
2688
JustMe said:

Like i mention in my post , now as you said accidentally you could banning some one instead of real spam , i have been banned on my main account for spam apparently , just by making 4 posts ? , obviously me and mr Admin have a different way of understanding spam . However mr Admin dont even answer for my msg for 4 days now.
There are 1,5-2k messages on the forum per week and hundreds of threads, many of the posts are not in appropriate threads - we cannot answer every individual post. If you are talking about a forum ban, contact one of the moderators on Discord. They will review the matter and either resolve it or bring it to our attention. If you are talking about the game, it has nothing to do with this thread, my posts, or anything on the forum - you need to contact Support.
Jul 15, 2019, 11:3607/15/19
05/13/19
40
Marius said:

JustMe said:

Like i mention in my post , now as you said accidentally you could banning some one instead of real spam , i have been banned on my main account for spam apparently , just by making 4 posts ? , obviously me and mr Admin have a different way of understanding spam . However mr Admin dont even answer for my msg for 4 days now.
There are 1,5-2k messages on the forum per week and hundreds of threads, many of the posts are not in appropriate threads - we cannot answer every individual post. If you are talking about a forum ban, contact one of the moderators on Discord. They will review the matter and either resolve it or bring it to our attention. If you are talking about the game, it has nothing to do with this thread, my posts, or anything on the forum - you need to contact Support.
Just make the topics have To be english only on this side so they either have To switch up or leave, is a very easy solution To try it out. 
MariusAdmin
Jul 15, 2019, 12:0707/15/19
Jul 15, 2019, 12:08(edited)
09/04/17
2688
jankka said:

Just make the topics have To be english only on this side so they either have To switch up or leave, is a very easy solution To try it out. 
Unironically, I've suggested a similar solution as a temporary fix about an hour ago. Let's hope something like this can be achieved. Neither moderators nor Community Managers are having fun plowing through the spam either, you can trust me on that. 
Jul 15, 2019, 13:3507/15/19
07/15/19
4

MARIUS, If I might share some suggestion about tackling this problem if you have dedicated developers for this forum CMS that is.
Revise your registration system. 

First of require a confirmation mail link to be clicked before a visitor is allowed to act like a user on the forum. It also creates a digital papertrail that might help in reporting the spammers to any providers. It is childsplay right now to create a robot form to make hundreds of legitimate looking accounts that could post like a hive on this board.


Second create a formfield that acts as honeypot at the top most part of the registration form. Hide this formfield with inline CSS and name the field something bots tend to use like email-1 or name-1

When the formfield is filled in and the registration form is submitted either redirect the user to a script that ban's the IP, unique identifier for 24 hours or If that is not possible due to server resource limitation redirect the input to a page that simply drops the action thus blackhole routing the bot.

That should should mitigate a lot more spam than recaptcha v2/3 if correctly implemented.


Regarding human generated spam the only way to combat that I found is delaying the messages by greylisting based on IP reputation and previous DB entries and if possible aplying Bayes rule. Furthermore it requires auditing regulary.
Though in my experience human generated spam is far more rare than most people think.

MariusAdmin
Jul 15, 2019, 13:4107/15/19
Jul 15, 2019, 13:41(edited)
09/04/17
2688
m663 said:

MARIUS, If I might share some suggestion about tackling this problem if you have dedicated developers for this forum CMS that is.
Revise your registration system. 

First of require a confirmation mail link to be clicked before a visitor is allowed to act like a user on the forum. It also creates a digital papertrail that might help in reporting the spammers to any providers. It is childsplay right now to create a robot form to make hundreds of legitimate looking accounts that could post like a hive on this board.


Second create a formfield that acts as honeypot at the top most part of the registration form. Hide this formfield with inline CSS and name the field something bots tend to use like email-1 or name-1

When the formfield is filled in and the registration form is submitted either redirect the user to a script that ban's the IP, unique identifier for 24 hours or If that is not possible due to server resource limitation redirect the input to a page that simply drops the action thus blackhole routing the bot.

That should should mitigate a lot more spam than recaptcha v2/3 if correctly implemented.


Regarding human generated spam the only way to combat that I found is delaying the messages by greylisting based on IP reputation and previous DB entries and if possible aplying Bayes rule. Furthermore it requires auditing regulary.
Though in my experience human generated spam is far more rare than most people think.

Hey there! Got some interesting ideas there and I'll pass them along, thank you. I've actually suggested the confirmation email as well when reporting the issue. So far I've no idea what will be implemented though. But I know there should be something with the upcoming forum update.
Jul 15, 2019, 15:2207/15/19
Jul 15, 2019, 15:23(edited)
07/15/19
4

You are welcome these things are always a challenge.

While the stakeholders discuss what has to be done you might want to implement a temporary word block on "*racc*com*"
That should slow the flow until more permanent measures are implemented. Or they start advertising different services offcourse.
Best of luck with the cleanup, mitigation.