Total Performance Web site
- Thread starter Yogi
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tfeverfred
Well-Known Member
They must be trying to get rid of all the spam that has popped up on the bulletin boards the last few weeks. For some reason that site gets hit pretty hard. I sure wish there was a way to find the people who put out that crap.
Mike
Well-Known Member
I have issues with their site on occasion. This morning, I was able to pop right in. And I see the index page has been changed and the spam had been removed from the forum. Maybe they were just changing some files when you were trying to hit them.
The unfortunate part about the spam is that it is not always a someone doing it. Sometimes is is a computer script. The people that write the code for this type of forum, vBulletin, added the CAPTCHA images to the registration pages, in an effort to eliminate the bots from getting through registration. There are add-ons that will simply add another question to the registration process, one that the bots won't be prepared to answer and thus fail the registration. And the question can be as simple as "Are you a human being? Yes or No?"
The problem then cropped up that humans were registering and as soon as they were registered, the account would be turned over to a bot, which would then spam the forum.
We use a script here that watches the first few posts made by a new member. It filters each new post, looking for words that might commonly be used by spammers. If the filter "sees" a post with the word 'sell', for instance, it will not allow the post to appear on the open forum. The post goes to a moderation queue, where one of us has to review it for content. If it is a harmless post, it gets validated. If it is a spammer trying to sell cellphones or porn, the post gets deleted and you never know it was even here. After a handful of posts, the new member's account is cleared by the spam filter and it is no longer an issue.
Typically, if a spammer can successfully register for a forum, they will leave 4-6 posts, hawking their wares. So, we run the threshold for the spam filter up higher than that. What we generally see is a spammer will attempt one post, see they are not going to taint the forum with their crap and they leave.
The bottom line is that we still get spammed, but we keep our members from being affected by it. If you can't see it, you can't be bothered by it.
The unfortunate part about the spam is that it is not always a someone doing it. Sometimes is is a computer script. The people that write the code for this type of forum, vBulletin, added the CAPTCHA images to the registration pages, in an effort to eliminate the bots from getting through registration. There are add-ons that will simply add another question to the registration process, one that the bots won't be prepared to answer and thus fail the registration. And the question can be as simple as "Are you a human being? Yes or No?"
The problem then cropped up that humans were registering and as soon as they were registered, the account would be turned over to a bot, which would then spam the forum.
We use a script here that watches the first few posts made by a new member. It filters each new post, looking for words that might commonly be used by spammers. If the filter "sees" a post with the word 'sell', for instance, it will not allow the post to appear on the open forum. The post goes to a moderation queue, where one of us has to review it for content. If it is a harmless post, it gets validated. If it is a spammer trying to sell cellphones or porn, the post gets deleted and you never know it was even here. After a handful of posts, the new member's account is cleared by the spam filter and it is no longer an issue.
Typically, if a spammer can successfully register for a forum, they will leave 4-6 posts, hawking their wares. So, we run the threshold for the spam filter up higher than that. What we generally see is a spammer will attempt one post, see they are not going to taint the forum with their crap and they leave.
The bottom line is that we still get spammed, but we keep our members from being affected by it. If you can't see it, you can't be bothered by it.
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