about numerous members

[Phonograph]

AlonzoBellavia, AndreasKrewer, ArnoldoSinton, AubreyWohlrab, BradleyWasem, BrendonKnaust, DonaldSteel, DuncanMoorcroft, EdgardoBradmon, EldenKolling, FlorencioSale, FreddyCooperstein, FredericWooden, GaleKockler, GerryHaisley, HansStaffeld, HughBanker, IrvinRackow, JordanWuestenberg, LeoFaigin, LindsayJabaut, LucienStarling, LynnRollock, ReneLangi, RicoGresh, RoyalJonker, SheltonCoggan, TeddyGastineau, TedSafranek, WendellBizzle

nobody finds that strange?

[Secret Squirrel]

It's a spammer attack.

Those accounts created thousands of notes on the social group pages. I had to disable posting in the social groups to shut them down.

[Phonograph]

ah ok, so it's not spam on the site but elsewhere
I think it's begun yesterday

[Myrkul]

What should we do about it ?
Can't you do a mass ban or something ?
Don't know how it works, but they'r still active/connected.

[cal]

At the moment nothing really needs to be done since they can't do anything.

Also, banning them wouldn't stop them from being active/connected. It would still show them as being logged in and viewing the ban page.

[_if]

Originally Posted by nextday

It would still show them as being logged in and viewing the ban page.

That's funny to me for some reason. Bots active just sitting on a ban page, beating their heads against the wall.

[Liontamer]

If you're willing to give me limited forum admin privileges, namely the ability to delete accounts/posts, I wouldn't mind cleaning out a bunch of spam accounts. One thing that helped OCR was setting it up so that all new accounts have to be manually approved by a forum admin, which we've done since 2009. I then went back and deleted every spam account I could find from our forums (there's no point in keeping them), and I manually approve all forum sign-ups for the ability to post.

Potential signs; the homepage link is spam, the IP resolves from India or Bangladesh, the first octet of the IP is 49, 58, 108, 113-125 or shows as "Could Not Resolve Hostname", the email address is from a disposable email service. The email looks like "FirstnameLastname123@".

Really, the smoking gun is the homepage link, since most spambots populate that field, followed by the signature. The important point is not to be trigger happy and to only delete obvious spam accounts. Occasionally, a bot may get through but it's better to play it safe, and any garbage can be erased if one gets through.

Speaking from experience, there's no reason to merely ban accounts; once you know it's a bot, you might as well delete it. There just needs to be a system in place to have a trusted staffer who likes grunt work to screen new sign-ups as they come in. I'm not saying I permanently want that role, but I've done it for years, and wouldn't mind helping out on that level and putting a framework in place. :-)

TL;DR - I'm willing to help remove the spam accounts, just gimme some forum privs and lemme at 'em.

[cal]

There's already a mod installed that's supposed to catch spammer registrations by checking the IP/username/email against a database of known spammers. These bots are all using fresh usernames and IP addresses though so they got through.

[razakin]

But but, without bots/spammers, how else I could get all those sweet deals they're offering? :!

[Liontamer]

Originally Posted by nextday

There's already a mod installed that's supposed to catch spammer registrations by checking the IP/username/email against a database of known spammers. These bots are all using fresh usernames and IP addresses though so they got through.

Yeah, definitely a bummer that they got by. Looks like a lot of Russian/Euro spam and some significant IP changing.

[GoldfishX]

Suggestion...Have new members say what their 3 favorite VGM albums are and why, minimum of 3 sentences for each. That way robots can't automatically create accounts.

[Phonograph]

I don't remember but accounts are validated by a url, no?
goldfishx's proposal + staff's validation after reading (I don't think it could be much work)