What's up with all those spam bots?

[hilariousandco]

* implement captcha for people with less than 100 post.

Personally I think adding another (better) captcha to sign-ups and when you make your first post you have to fill one in would help but not with every post and theymos seems to think they're pretty much useless anyway and I trust his judgement on that as he's a smarter guy than me and knows what he's doing when it comes to tech stuff but I don't think it would hurt adding a captcha personally.

Well most of the captcha could be bypassed easily (recaptcha v1+2, solvemedia..), but afaik funcaptcha seems to be the best (+/- are you human). Implementing one of the first category is useless and if the owner of the bot insist in spamming then he could find a way, for the 2 others there is a chance to slower him tho.

Btw, i used to report the spam like this (spam bot in the bitcoin discussion section) but when I find too much i report 1 then I write something like: another 5 spam bot posts in the bitcoin discussion section, dunno if it is helpful/easier for mods to nuke it than reporting it one by one?

I think any hurdles added to slow or stop them (or cost them more time, effort and money) are better than nothing and the crappy captcha we have at the moment and should be considered but basic ones that can be easily solved/botted themselves will be useless. Are there not any ones that are hard to bypass or possibly time-restricted to being filled in within 10-30 seconds or something to prevent cheap labour filling them out manually? As for reporting, reporting them each is preffered but if you just want to report one and state there's others that will do. Usually someone else will report them quite qucikly anyway.

the most difficult captcha i can think of having come across are those picture identification captchas, the ones where it says something along the lines of: 'identify all the sandwiches,' and you would choose 3 or 4 out of the 9 pictures presented. picture:

But those can just be outsourced to cheap labour too, right? Personally, I would prefer filling them out with a couple of clicks than typing out those stupid deformed word ones that can take me a couple of goes sometimes.

[1714899755]

1714899755

[kokojie]

* implement captcha for people with less than 100 post.

Personally I think adding another (better) captcha to sign-ups and when you make your first post you have to fill one in would help but not with every post and theymos seems to think they're pretty much useless anyway and I trust his judgement on that as he's a smarter guy than me and knows what he's doing when it comes to tech stuff but I don't think it would hurt adding a captcha personally.

Well most of the captcha could be bypassed easily (recaptcha v1+2, solvemedia..), but afaik funcaptcha seems to be the best (+/- are you human). Implementing one of the first category is useless and if the owner of the bot insist in spamming then he could find a way, for the 2 others there is a chance to slower him tho.

Btw, i used to report the spam like this (spam bot in the bitcoin discussion section) but when I find too much i report 1 then I write something like: another 5 spam bot posts in the bitcoin discussion section, dunno if it is helpful/easier for mods to nuke it than reporting it one by one?

I think any hurdles added to slow or stop them (or cost them more time, effort and money) are better than nothing and the crappy captcha we have at the moment and should be considered but basic ones that can be easily solved/botted themselves will be useless. Are there not any ones that are hard to bypass or possibly time-restricted to being filled in within 10-30 seconds or something to prevent cheap labour filling them out manually? As for reporting, reporting them each is preffered but if you just want to report one and state there's others that will do. Usually someone else will report them quite qucikly anyway.

I don't think it's possible to prevent cheap labour solving manually, because they are still humans after all, if you prevent humans from solving them, then legit users can't solve them too? 

Adding cost to spam is one of the best way to prevent spam. If it cost them $0.10 per spam post, and then that gets removed in a few seconds, it's not cost effective for them to spam any more.

[subSTRATA]

stuff

But those can just be outsourced to cheap labour too, right? Personally, I would prefer filling them out with a couple of clicks than typing out those stupid deformed word ones that can take me a couple of goes sometimes.

true, i just felt that these might be a bit more time - consuming with the image load times and whatnot, and that aside, everything nowadays can be and is outsourced to cheap labor. and in that sense, captchas wouldnt be at all be a solution as long as the spammer was willing to pay for said labor. implementing this sort (or any sort) of captcha wouldnt necessarily be a solution, but it would slow down the creation of new accounts and make it more costly for the spammer though. the cost itself might be enough to deter a fair bit of spam, seeing as how the accounts arent really getting anything done except taking up a small portion of data in the forum's db.

[InvoKing]

Are there not any ones that are hard to bypass or possibly time-restricted to being filled in within 10-30 seconds or something to prevent cheap labour filling them out manually?

Afaik funcaptcha is the one that is hard to be bypassed by bots and i remember it has advanced options that make it even harder.
Demo: https://www.funcaptcha.com/demo/
In this demo you have only 2 rounds challenges, i remember you can make more (4 or 6 if I am not wrong) then he will need ~10 sec to solve it.

Edit: maybe this could be helpful

Step Three

Log into funcaptcha, then click "site settings"


Scroll down and click on the little gear, underneath "setup".

Then scroll down to the "security" tab select "always enhanced". Click save, then wait 5-10 minutes. Your captcha will now be alot harder for bots to bypass.

[shorena]

@Captchas:

I personally dislike them for several reasons:

#1 They are pain with tor or any other browser without javascript or hard to solve. At least for me. If I want to visit a site with Tor and its blocking me because of Tor with a captcha I just gave up and stoped visiting these pages. Its a collosal waste of my time to try and solve them. Its mostly cloud flare AFAIK.

#2 They are a pain to solve for honest users, but not for those that already invest time and money to spam the forum with nonsense. Yes, it would make the spam more expensive, but I dont think it will stop it. It might however stop new users that do not understand and do not care why the captchs had been put in place. We would essentially reduce the newbie jail without the need to post, but instead to solve captchas. The 360 seconds rule already annoy people.

@More moderation:

I dont see a reason for more staff, at least not durring NA/EU times. Most of my reports are handled quickly, esp. those regarding newbies. I think its the same for those form NA.


Offtopic/joke section:

-snip-

At least I don't change my name.

You know you want to...
Edit: Sho does a good job you know

Im no longer in account "deleting" business.

-snip-
SC2 is considered to have a high skill ceiling, but it's artificially inflated by forcing people to do micromanagement activities like injecting larvae, managing hatchlings, things like that (APM, or actions per minute). It just ends up being frantic and kind of a drag, and makes it more difficult to focus on the fun part, the strategy.

I hear this was greatly reduced with the latest expansion. Cant confirm though as I blow my battle.net money on HotS.

I don't play games all that much anymore, and usually just on weekends, but when I do I play with friends so we play competitive multiplayer type stuff like Rocket League, or Heroes of the Storm. Sometimes TF2.

[unamis76]

I seriously cannot think of a reason why someone bothers to spam random words. I really wonder what's their motivation. Been reporting the ones that don't get nuked instantly. Haven't been able to hit my report limit lately tho

[USB-S]

I seriously cannot think of a reason why someone bothers to spam random words. I really wonder what's their motivation. Been reporting the ones that don't get nuked instantly. Haven't been able to hit my report limit lately tho

A lot are speculating that they are tying to get the post count up. I don't really buy that because that shit isn't really sustainable in the long run.
However would love to hear some alternative theories about this. I mean this looks pretty retarded and useless to me. In before the messages have a bitcoin address encoded in them that contains several hundred bitcoins.

[InvoKing]

@shorena: from what I understood the new captcha is meant to replace the actual one when registering new account +/- in the first newbie post(s), so it will not have anything to do with the actual btctalkers
Since the bot didn't stop its random spam, i think implementing new captcha isn't harmful, if it will succeed to stop the bot then it is a good thing else we didn't lose anything. The actual captcha is useless anyway  

Edit:

so they are nothing more than an annoyance if you constantly check the "Show unread posts since last visit. " as me

Same

[mexxer-2]

I seriously cannot think of a reason why someone bothers to spam random words.

More than 3 threads about it by now(first two listed on the second post). Mine(the first one) : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1275923.0

Since the bot didn't stop its random spam, i think implementing new captcha isn't harmful, if it will succeed to stop the bot then it is a good thing else we didn't lose anything. The actual captcha is useless anyway 

I believe 3rd party captchas are not used due to any exploit potentially facilitated by them, could be wrong on this one, as I remember seeing it vaguely posted by a staff/moderator/admin. At any rate, this is what patrollers are "paid" to do, they get removed within minutes if not seconds, so they are nothing more than an annoyance if you constantly check the "Show unread posts since last visit. " as me

[Amph]

Captcha can be solved by spam bots, but it cost money, because they hire someone in the 3rd world to solve it manually, about $0.10 per captcha. I think you can try to do a statistic report, you should see no one with 100 or more post count, is spamming. So it should be very effective in vastly reducing spam.

I never tried the report feature before, I just tried it, and reported 3 spam in Chinese forum. Looks like it does work well, they were removed pretty fast.

it's more like 0.5 per 1000 captcha, so very cheap, check 2captcha

it will not work not even as a deterrent

[Snorek]

Now I am glad we have that newbie posting restriction. I was against it some time ago but now I see this as good way of defending forum from these 'spam nonsense' attacks.

[unholycactus]

I seriously cannot think of a reason why someone bothers to spam random words. I really wonder what's their motivation. Been reporting the ones that don't get nuked instantly. Haven't been able to hit my report limit lately tho

If you want to be annoying and all you have to do is write a small script, it could be worth it.

[Mickeyb]

I seriously cannot think of a reason why someone bothers to spam random words. I really wonder what's their motivation. Been reporting the ones that don't get nuked instantly. Haven't been able to hit my report limit lately tho

The same reason the people are FUDing and trolling on the forum. They do have some hidden agenda. Either they are paid to do so by someone or they want to lower the price or they hate Bitcoin, etc..

[shorena]

@shorena: from what I understood the new captcha is meant to replace the actual one when registering new account +/- in the first newbie post(s), so it will not have anything to do with the actual btctalkers
Since the bot didn't stop its random spam, i think implementing new captcha isn't harmful, if it will succeed to stop the bot then it is a good thing else we didn't lose anything. The actual captcha is useless anyway  
-snip-

For registering an account im perfectly ok with a captcha, but not with the first X posts. There are still new humans coming here, asking for help, trying to understand bitcoin.

[botany]

Wouldn't that mean less shares for the existing ones? Or does the share from ad revenue only go to Global moderators and Section moderators, not Patrollers?

From what I have read, patrollers do make reasonable amounts of BTC. So that shouldn't be a problem. 

I think the mod money that is allocated is capped to certain staff levels. Patrollers seem to get a max of around 2btc or so if they're very active whereas very active Globals like grue and BadBear get near or around 8btc (though I believe it's dished out by the dollar value so it will fluctuate from time to time but the payments in comparison are roughly the same)

[marbleregional]

If someone bans an account, they make a new one.
If someone bans an ip, they get a new one.

D: Dynamic IP
IB: IP Ban
B: Ban

Account #1 IP: 11.1.1.1 - > Gets banned
moves on to
Account #2 IP: 11.1.1.1 - > Gets IP banned
moves on to new IP
Account #3 IP: 12.1.1.1 -> Gets IP banned

etc

It's easy to bypass any ban if you know what to do. Spam bots will always be here, and the post limits just annoy the legit members who want to post but can't.

[Straux]

Yeah. There's a crapton of them on bitcoin discussion. I'm getting real annoyed, they don't even make any sense. Meh, more posts to report, increase my accuracy.

[justspare]

I've seen many posts made on bitcoin discussion that is completely not understandable and meaningless. The accounts made seem to have randomly generated characters.

Something has to be done.

[shorena]

I've seen many posts made on bitcoin discussion that is completely not understandable and meaningless. The accounts made seem to have randomly generated characters.

Something has to be done.

"Report to moderator" -> spam -> done. Most of them are removed within the minute the post is created.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1278196.0

[Amph]

it seems that they are generating thread at a faster rate than the banned one, at this point it look like they are not being banned

the spammer is going serious with this