Ways to reduce spambots?

[Muhammed Zakir]

Hello! Recently I saw many spams from spambots. Bot registrations are high. I think we can reduce it by limiting number of registrations per IP per day and by putting captcha when registering. I know both can be bypassed but I think it can reduce spambots. Any idea and/or suggestions are welcome!

[Quickseller]

There already is a captcha when registering.

The forum really needs more patrollers to nuke/take care of all the spambots as after enabling the "patrol" button for only a few hours I have reported probably 5 or 6 spam bots that I found in the patrol function.

One option might be to make it so having an account "nuked" has the same effect as having an account banned when units of evil are calculated (I assume this is not the case currently)

[MRKLYE]

Hello! Recently I saw many spams from spambots. Bot registrations are high. I think we can reduce it by limiting number of registrations per IP per day and by putting captcha when registering. I know both can be bypassed but I think it can reduce spambots. Any idea and/or suggestions are welcome!

When you have a large forum like this it is nearly impossoble to eliminate all spam bots.. people will always find ways.
I think it boils down to maybe having more moderators patrolling different sub forums and looking for spam bot garbage.
Then maybe go about banning the IP's of those doing such activity and then go on from there.

[notlist3d]

Hello! Recently I saw many spams from spambots. Bot registrations are high. I think we can reduce it by limiting number of registrations per IP per day and by putting captcha when registering. I know both can be bypassed but I think it can reduce spambots. Any idea and/or suggestions are welcome!

When you have a large forum like this it is nearly impossoble to eliminate all spam bots.. people will always find ways.
I think it boils down to maybe having more moderators patrolling different sub forums and looking for spam bot garbage.
Then maybe go about banning the IP's of those doing such activity and then go on from there.

I could see this being harder then we think on banning.  We think about easy to do IP range.  But I believe China still has to go through a vpn/other methods I believe. ( http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=https%3A%2F%2Fbitcointalk.org%2F )

So I do not envy the moderators on looking by IP with forums big base I would imagine quite a few are using some common IP's to get through. But I could be completely wrong I have no numbers to back it up.

[Muhammed Zakir]

There already is a captcha when registering.
 -snip-

Current captcha is very poor IMHO. We should use areyouahuman or reCaptcha.

[notlist3d]

There already is a captcha when registering.
 -snip-

Current captcha is very poor IMHO. We should use areyouahuman or reCaptcha.

As long as it's not broken and can be OCR'ed, the forum is ok.   When you say poor is it one that can is broken to OCR?

As long as it makes them do it manually or pay a service I would consider capatcha ok.  If they have beaten it then yes definitely switch.

[XinXan]

Where have you seen these spambots? I havent seen any lately honestly. When you register you need to provide your email aswell right? Doesnt that slow the bots already? The only effective way of dealing with this would be some way of verification, like mobile phone verification but i know it wont happen.

[NLNico]

Just remember to always press that little "REPORT TO MODERATOR" link in right bottom. Generally deleted after few minutes of reporting.

[hilariousandco]

Where have you seen these spambots? I havent seen any lately honestly. When you register you need to provide your email aswell right? Doesnt that slow the bots already? The only effective way of dealing with this would be some way of verification, like mobile phone verification but i know it wont happen.

You can provide a fake email address and the bots are nuked very fast and usually within minutes so most don't see them. I think a better captcha system should be added and very likely will with the new forum.

[Muhammed Zakir]

Where have you seen these spambots? I havent seen any lately honestly.

I saw spams from spambot(s) even in Meta. You can see many if you closely watch Patrol page.

When you register you need to provide your email aswell right? Doesnt that slow the bots already?

It won't.

The only effective way of dealing with this would be some way of verification, like mobile phone verification but i know it wont happen.

A mobile or similar verifications shouldn't be implemented.

Just remember to always press that little "REPORT TO MODERATOR" link in right bottom. Generally deleted after few minutes of reporting.

Always using but we need a way to slowdown registration.

[XinXan]

Where have you seen these spambots? I havent seen any lately honestly.

I saw spams from spambot(s) even in Meta. You can see many if you closely watch Patrol page.

When you register you need to provide your email aswell right? Doesnt that slow the bots already?

It won't.

The only effective way of dealing with this would be some way of verification, like mobile phone verification but i know it wont happen.

A mobile or similar verifications shouldn't be implemented.

Just remember to always press that little "REPORT TO MODERATOR" link in right bottom. Generally deleted after few minutes of reporting.

Always using but we need a way to slowdown registration.

Is there any way to block the registration from 1 PC, like no matter what IP it has if its the same PC it gets blocked and you cant register more accounts? Or is that impsossible.

And what is the patrol thing?

[Muhammed Zakir]

Is there any way to block the registration from 1 PC, like no matter what IP it has if its the same PC it gets blocked and you cant register more accounts? Or is that impsossible.

IP ban can happen but registrations shouldn't be blocked if there is an account from that IP. But there should a restriction for number of registrations per IP per day.

And what is the patrol thing?

See the link. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol

It is a page for patrollers(aka staffs) for moderating newbies' posts.

[monbux]

Just remember to always press that little "REPORT TO MODERATOR" link in right bottom. Generally deleted after few minutes of reporting.

I do this and they get taken down pretty fast.  I haven't seen any spambots around, is that because I've been in the wrong sections?  Could someone post some examples of some posts made by spambots?

[XinXan]

Is there any way to block the registration from 1 PC, like no matter what IP it has if its the same PC it gets blocked and you cant register more accounts? Or is that impsossible.

IP ban can happen but registrations shouldn't be blocked if there is an account from that IP. But there should a restriction for number of registrations per IP per day.

And what is the patrol thing?

See the link. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol

It is a page for patrollers(aka staffs) for moderating newbies' posts.

No what i mean is not IP ban or IP  restrictions because you can easily just change your IP and boom start registering again, what i was asking for is if there is any way to restrict a PC like no matter what IP that PC has. I dont know if its possible probably not but that would solve the problem

[Muhammed Zakir]

Just remember to always press that little "REPORT TO MODERATOR" link in right bottom. Generally deleted after few minutes of reporting.

I do this and they get taken down pretty fast.  I haven't seen any spambots around, is that because I've been in the wrong sections?  Could someone post some examples of some posts made by spambots?

See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1055302.msg11336341#msg11336341. There was an interesting post by a bot which shorena reported in Meta. I will post the link if I found it.

Edit: Shorena's post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1019415.0

No what i mean is not IP ban or IP  restrictions because you can easily just change your IP and boom start registering again, what i was asking for is if there is any way to restrict a PC like no matter what IP that PC has. I dont know if its possible probably not but that would solve the problem

IP ban is not much helpful but it can increase workload of spammers. Maybe banning by Browser Fingerprint if that's possible? It can also be bypassed like IP ban.

[erikalui]

Is it possible for the moderators to manually approve accounts to prevent bots from registering on the forum and then banning them? I know it's time consuming but if it's a method to help the forum, it's worth the time.

[hilariousandco]

It's possible but like you said time-consuming. I wouldn't be opposed to approving accounts or people's first post but I'm not entirely sure it's needed as bots get nuked pretty quick.

[XinXan]

It's possible but like you said time-consuming. I wouldn't be opposed to approving accounts or people's first post but I'm not entirely sure it's needed as bots get nuked pretty quick.

How would you be able to know if someone is making an account from the same computer if he can just change his IP, i mean manual approval wont help at all right? Maybe looking into the username to see if its example and example1 made in the last 5 minutes then of course you would know its the same person but other than that it would still be impossible

[alani123]

This has been discussed before. People that create those accounts are likely using very expensive software that's really good at captcha solving. There's a high chance that there are even humans solving those captchas through a service like anti-captcha. I'll have to agree that the current captcha is not the best, but other captcha's certainly wouldn't help mutch since they can still be solved by softare or some sort of semi-automation.

We should look at why those accounts actually get created. Bitcointalk is a PR 6 website, this makes it realy good for websites that want to receive backlinks around the web. Those websites that get advertised here certainly aren't looking for targeted advertising but for better website ranking. I'd suggest dissalowing newbies to link to any sorf of website through their profiles. Maybe some restrictions when posting links too. Linking to your website through a PR6 forum is a priviledge, it's so easily abused at the moment.

People that create an account should be forced wait to get some activity before they can take advantage of bitcointalk's page rank for SEO. IMO this would reduce acount creation abuse for blackhat SEO purpuses dramatially.

[hilariousandco]

It's possible but like you said time-consuming. I wouldn't be opposed to approving accounts or people's first post but I'm not entirely sure it's needed as bots get nuked pretty quick.

How would you be able to know if someone is making an account from the same computer if he can just change his IP, i mean manual approval wont help at all right? Maybe looking into the username to see if its example and example1 made in the last 5 minutes then of course you would know its the same person but other than that it would still be impossible

You don't need to know what computer it's come from; it's the content of their post.