Wow, to be able to tell if an account is spambot before it even posts. That takes skills

I'm guessing when an account name going something like RealNiceTShirtForSale, it basically screams "spambot here please delete"

gorgeousshutin wrote:

Wow, to be able to tell if an account is spambot before it even posts. That takes skills

I'm guessing when an account name going something like RealNiceTShirtForSale, it basically screams "spambot here please delete"

And you can check their profiles -- usually, they'll post spam links there, too.

Ragnarok wrote:

eDeneenShepardw looks mildly suspicious.

I should say so.  Deleted!  Best to PM me about this sort of thing, so as not to clog this thread with reports

Spam per day continues to decline.  Good work, team   Leaderboard since June 27:

onsenmark: 9
Ashnod: 3
Ragnarok: 3
Crystalline_Dream: 1
MikoGalatea: 1
Nova: 1
Raven Nightshade: 1

Thank you all.

I wish I knew how spam factories operate, and in particular what system is used to pay the workers.  Gio is confident that IRG spam is not bot spam; every spammer I banned or deleted represents a human being.  But why do so many human spammers make accounts here but not post from them?  We get a lot of new registrants with spam links in their sigs, but since they never post, no one sees their sig.  Ragnarok also wondered in one of his spam reports why spammers concentrate their posts in one forum instead of spreading them around.  My guess offhand is that it makes them less likely to be spotted immediately, but I really have no idea.  Probably all of these questions are related to whatever weird incentive structure is used by the spam factories.   I guess if I were getting paid a nickel or whatever for every account I created, but wasn't getting paid to post, I might make a bunch of zero-post spam accounts too.

Atropos wrote:

ytfgha20 is likely a bot.

Poor ytfgha20 hit some kind of perfect storm; I had eight reports when I logged on, all from different members   What makes you think it's a bot and not a human?

gorgeousshutin wrote:

Satyreyes wrote:

What makes you think it's a bot and not a human?

It's "post".

What about it?  It just said "thanks for the post," and then linked a bunch of spam websites.

I'm not an expert, so the rest of this post is just an educated guess, but: Human spammers are not trying to engage with the forum.  Frequently they don't even speak English.  (Most of our spam attacks come from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and a couple other places.)  If their posts feel mechanical, it's not necessarily because they're produced by a machine; it's more likely to be because the spammer is impatient to get done with this forum and earn their nickel or whatever, so that they can move on to the next forum on what I'm sure is a very long list.  What's more, spammers certainly have no personal stake in the services they try to link us to.  They post on behalf of whoever has hired their spam-posting company today.  They get paid the same whether we click those links or not.  So with a few exceptions, they don't try very hard to disguise themselves.

There must be a book about the spam industry floating around out there somewhere...

Well, I couldn't be on as much as I usually am -- blame Otakon, lol.

So for the last four days or so, Ohtori.nu has occasionally been flickering offline.  This has happened three times that I know of, for maybe half an hour to an hour each, and there may have been others.  Gio's going to get in touch with our host about it, and we'll see if we can get it resolved.  On the bright side, the gallery seems to be working better!

I don't have a spam leaderboard this time around, but I want to thank everyone who's reported spam or spammers in the last month and a half or so.  Special shout-out to onsenmark, who continues to be instrumental in fingering spam accounts practically the instant they register.  The volume of spam that's made it to the board has been way down, and that's thanks to you guys.

We had a wave of spammers today, or possibly just one spammer attacking repeatedly, from an IP band in Dhaka.  I've banned 65,536 IP addresses that I believe to be based in Dhaka, including the ones these guys used -- but because IP addresses are sometimes assigned in a slipshod way, it's possible that some of those addresses are actually located somewhere else.  (Or for that matter that they belong to perfectly nice people in Dhaka who are interested in Utena and want to join IRG.)

The odds are very remote that anyone already registered will be affected, but just in case: if you have any trouble logging into your account, let me know and I'll sort it out.

Thanks to everyone who reported these most recent attacks! 

Last edited by satyreyes (10-31-2012 11:09:20 PM)

I know it's been mentioned by Giovanna, though maybe not in this thread, that the gallery is borked to hell. Personally, I'd assume it's another symptom of the perpetual issues she's been having trying to get it to work properly for all of us.


EDIT: Not to say it's broken, per se, but that it doesn't function well at all under heavy load and is a complete resource hog on the server. Also not to say that this may not be a completely new issue.

Last edited by Aine Silveria (11-10-2012 03:46:22 AM)

As many of you noted, we had yet another big wave of spam yesterday and this morning.  Another day, another 20,000 IP addresses banned.  How many IPs can there be in Dhaka?  Thanks for the spam reports!

Last edited by satyreyes (11-14-2012 09:48:55 AM)

Bangladesh, it's their capital city.