Spammers and spambots...

[Ottobot]

Yeah, they pretty much discovered this site.

They need to be zapped.

[Westernden]

They've found us.

Lets kick some arse 

[Brian Greenstone, CEO Pangea]

Yep, sorry about that.  Normally I catch these immediately, but I've been out of town for 3 days, so this one slipped by me.  Currently I have the forum setup so that it uses user-authentication (where they have to click a link in an email), but if this continues or gets bad I'll setup for admin authentication so that I have to authenticate all new forum members.  It's pretty easy to spot the spammers because their email addresses are always gibberish.

-Brian

[Shadowbreaker]

On other forums, I once saw the membership form had a field that said "Are you a spambot", maybe you could install something like that . On another, they blocked all email addresses that ended in ".info"

[Ottobot]

I've seen instances where spambots can almost carry a conversation with members. Except, what they say is a bit vague or non sensible, as all they would do is copy and paste stuff other members said to make it look like they're involved. It's when they post links selling fake watches that they give themselves away.

[Shadowbreaker]

Well, if they carry out conversations with people, I see no problem

Whatever anti-spam technique we pick, I recommend not doing the Administrator authorization. I remember on IMG they have that, and I had to wait like 2 days in order to post something. Currently we've got a rather small community here (Two nights ago I suddenly sensed that the Pangea site had been updated and found this place) so I guess it doesn't matter for now, but if all 1000000000 people who bought Enigmo for iPhone suddenly join, it might become an issue.

[Brian Greenstone, CEO Pangea]

Yeah, I probably won't go that route.  It's just a click of 3 buttons for me to kill a spammer and all of his posts, so it's no biggie.  This only seems to happen 1 or 2 times a week anyways.  I just wish there was a way for me to simply block access to anyone in Africa since that's where all of these spammers seem to be coming from).  There's probably a way for me to set that up on the sever, but I have no clue how.

-Brian

[fernandovalente]

I don't think blocking people from Africa would be a good idea. I mean, you probably have customers who live there. It's best to block just the IPs