Spammer Report Thread (use this one)

[Lucas88]

Not EVEN gonna guess

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22375

[Lucas88]

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22376

[Lucas88]

micheldell is in several threads

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=20073

[nypup2train]

I believe I've whacked everything that remained, from the reports above... and a couple more I noticed myself.

Originally Posted by Ragetiger

I hate to suggest this, but it needs to be said: disable registration to the forums for a time. These spammers are out of control, there's at least three more running and oddly enough posting on this thread.

Originally Posted by drew

Actually it's no more than usual. In fact it's way down from a year or so ago, it's just that there's a team of us who check the site throughout the day and catch them most of the time before you guys can notice them.

The annoying part recently is they're only making one post each so it takes longer to ban and clean them.

Disabling registration would definitely be drastic ? I don't think we really want to close the community to new genuine members. And some sort of hand-verification for new registrations would require impractical levels of manpower -- it'd effectively be a less-delegated version of how CYOC went "referral-only" (though for different reasons) a while ago. That proved hugely unpopular and generally didn't work out that well for them. We're small communities that depend on a constant trickle of new members to stay viable... unfortunately, spammers "come with".

But Ragetiger's suggestion did get me to thinking... is there a way to kneecap the spammers, without locking out actual participants?

One obvious possibility would be to shut off the forum's signature system entirely -- almost all of the spammers depend on it for their offsite link-embedding. But that might not be too popular with the user community, many of whom make active use of the signature system... and who've already had to give up their avatars.

I also don't really know how "smart" the spambots are -- if they can't drop spam into their posts via offsite links in their signatures, what will happen? Will they notice, and give up trying to spam here? (That seems too... ideal to actually work.) Or will they stupidly keep right on making useless (to them) gibberish posts, which would only be that much harder for us to police because we've eliminated the telltale signatures?

...Meh. See? This is how it goes -- any sort of magical fix to "deal with" spammers preventatively, ends up on the "more harm than good" pile.

Which is why, in the end, my "It's Not That Much Damn Spam" rant still sums up my feelings on the issue.

[Lucas88]

Spanish Spam

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22429

[Yachirobi]

Appapsime. It just started attacking tonight.

[Yachirobi]

BreaniSonna

[Tronald]

User xCleseNaryerent ( http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/member.php?u=39783) is a slow-moving spam wave, maybe 'cause it's hard to mix 20 languages into 1 post, let alone several:

"rosaria greco facebook" http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22472
"claudia islas wikipedia" http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22470

I like the way we have [Spanish name] [latin word] [famous website] goin' there...

[Yachirobi]

Vivaldyd
stevebucknor1 - Replied to a thread using copied text--MY text--and added a generic comment to cover itself up.

[Yachirobi]

There's also sCleseNaryerenm, which is a clear copy of xCleseNarverenm

Edit: Anything that sounds like the above names is BAD.

Also, delete panopebpads. It's shilling Canadian drugs.

[Lucas88]

This guy just hit about a half a dozen threads:

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/member.php?u=39807

[Lucas88]

Another spammer that hit this morning:

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/member.php?u=39806

[Lucas88]

The new method of madness...posts with a couple dozen links listed by these guys:

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/member.php?u=39804

[Lucas88]

This guy is good...if he didn't just join today and post 5 messages with "eca stack" link in the signature, I'd wonder:

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/member.php?u=39746

[Lucas88]

another:

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/member.php?u=39823

[Lucas88]

and another spammer:

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/member.php?u=39824

[Lucas88]

and yet another spammer:

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/member.php?u=39809

[drew]

Don't post links to the profiles. We can only delete them from the posts. So just link to the post (like thread and say who it is and what page)

[Lucas88]

on second thought, nevermind

[Tronald]

Boidwible's russian wrapped around an english spam link:

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=17351
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...=1289&p=143561

Russian google-translates as:
This nazyvaets
But why are so tormented? Is it so hard to dig in the forum? A couple of clicks in the search and found what he wanted. A better way to use Nero - something else bw night thunder (WEB2008). At least for my use, I look like a better analogue would not

[Yachirobi]

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22501
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22500
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22499

Those are just a FEW.

RiniJoymn is especially sneaky as it talks about building abs but the message is clearly advertising.

[Tronald]

Another big block of 100% link text from a user name like jCleaseNaryano

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22531

[V.R.Goh]

Here's another one.

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22570

[Yachirobi]

There is no end to this? Is there nothing we can do other than ignore it or just keep banning bots?

Both started by bots:
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22577
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22582

Hijacked by a bot (Antoniofrezingus or something like that.)
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=18478

[Yachirobi]

bot reply
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...662#post143662

[Tronald]

user with a name like unursowerfofe posts Russian text with SEO/Spam links:
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...21257&p=143772
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22582

Also AntonioFrengzus posts empty stuff with spam links:
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...13004&p=143774

[Tronald]

All using similar tactics like [name] [word] [famoussiteurl]:
sCleseNaryerenu
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22597

qCleseNaryereno
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22595

qCleseNaryerenz
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22594

cidontandyu
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22599

phenterminox1
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22600

qidontandyc
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22599

[Yachirobi]

la gacilly yves rocher
The Best Quality Wholesale Electronics Resources

It's a lot better today than it has been. Thank you, mods, for cleaning out the bots!

[arpeejay]

Originally Posted by Yachirobi

la gacilly yves rocher
The Best Quality Wholesale Electronics Resources

It's a lot better today than it has been. Thank you, mods, for cleaning out the bots!

You're welcome -- I'm sure I've deleted 30+ thus far today!

xoxo

Richard

[Yachirobi]

You're welcome, Richard, but here's more for you:

scialla la canzone
hotel rodi cervia

[V.R.Goh]

Got another spammer, this time in Russian (or some other language that uses such an alphabet).

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22684

[Tronald]

Pure link-text-link-text spam for a dozen lines

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...124#post144124

Spammers' ID is Hitneolitob

[musclekeith2001]

Spammer infecting every board
ID inidgevitnece

http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ewpost&t=22767

[drew]

Thanks again guys. They seem to all be gone for now.

[nypup2train]

Originally Posted by Yachirobi

It's a lot better today than it has been. Thank you, mods, for cleaning out the bots!

It reallly will peter off a little, over time. The spammers get IP-banned when they're evicted. As the site's library of "Spammer IPs" gets more and more complete, there will be fewer and fewer places they can come from that permit them access to the boards.

Of course, since they're spammers, they know to keep changing IPs to get around the inevitable bans. But, hey, as long as we're still on IPv4 the entire address space is limited to roughly 4 billion IPs. They'll have to run out eventually!

[Tronald]

User ID = gaxopazidau
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22802

User ID = waxopazidab
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22806

User ID = Licasnaws (SEO'ing his own "how to SEO" squidoo page!)
http://www.musclegrowth.org/forum/sh...ad.php?t=22805Licasnaws

[arpeejay]

@ Tronald:

Got 'em!

xoxo

Richard

[fleXodus]

I'd really like to thank everyone for being so diligent in reporting spammers during this most recent "outbreak".

ReCaptcha, which was the system used to verify "human" users upon registration has obviously been compromised and is no longer a deterrent to spam registration on this or any other vBulletin site.

I've gone ahead and instead implemented a Question-And-Answer human verification method which asks random logic-based questions during registration.

Hopefully we should see a reduction in spam postings within the next few days. It looks like most of the recent spam posts have come from newly-registered accounts.

[arpeejay]

I think it's working, Flexodus. Just signed on for the first time today and NO SPAM, as far as I can tell -- first time that's happened in a couple of weeks!

Thanks!

Richard

[drew]

There were two spammers with 3 threads this morning. All in all, nothing compared to the norm lately.