Warnings and Site Ban Theater

[zixi]

25 minutes ago, Pickysaurus said:

like Google/Hotmail not doing much to stop multiple spam signups via their email accounts 

They drive me spare. I run this tiny, tiny, microscopic forum (think of a very small number indeed... smaller than that and that!) I now have a system in position which confounds the AI but it doesn't stop the spammers from attempting to sign up. As soon as I see 'google' the alarm goes off: This is probably a spammer... and of course it always is... no real person ever joins... ever...

I do feel sorry for Nexus dealing with them - it really isn't fun! My method would need to be automated to work and wow that be some coding... I think AI will crack my method eventually but not before the arrival of Skynet and Terminator... Hopefully...

17 minutes ago, HeyYou said:

I've had to do some hoop-jumping to attempt to create accounts with google

And there's the irony! Spammers can have two zillion accounts with google but try to get a separate one for your forum and it's seriously hard work and try to use that account to open another account and you find you've had to promise your first born and I haven't got one!

I feel much better now thanks! And you've answered a question I've been longing to ask - about spammers - but was too shy...

[showler]

This one got a warning because they're not aware of alternative spellings:

 

[RedHeadAngel]

I was on the bans thread looking for a mod author who was banned because they made a couple of cool mods I found. That was when I saw this.

After reading what this clown said, I have nothing to say about this, how would you say, special breed of idiot.

DISCLAIMER: This is not the mod author I'm talking about. That's this person for whom I no longer have respect.

[RedHeadAngel]

3 hours ago, showler said:

This one got a warning because they're not aware of alternative spellings:

 

I would love to see how they respond to "colour" instead of "color" or "judgement" instead of "judgment." 

[Pickysaurus]

14 hours ago, zixi said:

They drive me spare. I run this tiny, tiny, microscopic forum (think of a very small number indeed... smaller than that and that!) I now have a system in position which confounds the AI but it doesn't stop the spammers from attempting to sign up. As soon as I see 'google' the alarm goes off: This is probably a spammer... and of course it always is... no real person ever joins... ever...

I do feel sorry for Nexus dealing with them - it really isn't fun! My method would need to be automated to work and wow that be some coding... I think AI will crack my method eventually but not before the arrival of Skynet and Terminator... Hopefully...

And there's the irony! Spammers can have two zillion accounts with google but try to get a separate one for your forum and it's seriously hard work and try to use that account to open another account and you find you've had to promise your first born and I haven't got one!

I feel much better now thanks! And you've answered a question I've been longing to ask - about spammers - but was too shy...

I definitely feel your pain there.

In recent weeks the website has been hit with an unending torrent of spam. Between automated tools and manual moderation I do think we're doing a good job at keeping everyone safe from it, but there will always be a few who get through. 

My advice is to look at what the spammers are posting and see what they're getting out of it. From there you can try and understand what they want and how best to prevent them from getting it. In our case, they're abusing our high SEO ranking so when they post spam and funnel lots of fake traffic to it, it will appear higher in search results. 

[zixi]

@Pickysaurus - thank you! The feeling the pain is returned. You people do a fabulous job. Never doubt that.

My forum is tiny. (I have run quite big ones but this one  could fit in my study!) My husband - retired software engineer - wrote a challenge.  But mostly I can tell if it's a spammer. The google is a pointer - but there are other signs. I've had no one 'break' through since we implemented the system but then only one real human being signed up in nearly a year! It was obvious they were human. There's no way I could cope with your volume without automating the tool (which isn't easily possible). Our forum shouldn't be interesting to spammers which makes me think it's a bot attack - a human would realise that talking to so  few people isn't worth it. At least I credit them with that intelligence...

I say again - you do a fabulous job. You retain a sense of humour and integrity with kindness and dignity. The constant Me! Me! Me! from some people here would get to me these days.

Thank you! I do feel safe here and I do feel as if I'm part of a community.

Live Long and Prosper!

[AlienSlof]

I see there are some still trying to game the DP system:

People are so greedy. Makes me sad.

[cyan49]

1 hour ago, AlienSlof said:

I see there are some still trying to game the DP system:

People are so greedy. Makes me sad.

Thanks to Pickysaurus for addressing this, he's the guy who made the No-Intro mods for almost 100 games and I didn't report him because I wasn't sure if he was spamming the Game Registry Tweaks mod maliciously or not. But he closed the comments on his second attempt, which makes his behavior even more suspicious.

[AaronOfMpls]

22 hours ago, zixi said:

And there's the irony! Spammers can have two zillion accounts with google but try to get a separate one for your forum and it's seriously hard work and try to use that account to open another account and you find you've had to promise your first born and I haven't got one!

Yah, spammers compromise many people's accounts via phishing scams, and by guessing weak or reused passwords.  And some will pay people to create accounts for them (in widely dispersed places or through proxies), since capchas etc only check that there's a human in the loop somewhere -- and it looks more like regular people creating accounts that way if it's not the same or similar IP addresses behind them. 

2 hours ago, AlienSlof said:

I see there are some still trying to game the DP system:

People are so greedy. Makes me sad.

32 minutes ago, cyan49 said:

Thanks to Pickysaurus for addressing this, he's the guy who made the No-Intro mods for almost 100 games and I didn't report him because I wasn't sure if he was spamming the Game Registry Tweaks mod maliciously or not. But he closed the comments on his second attempt, which makes his behavior even more suspicious.

Oh my...  Yah, reposting as a separate mod might make sense for, say, a complete rebuild that becomes a different mod.  But usually you keep the old mod up, possibly marked obsolete, so people can re-download it for old saves. 

This is just ... excessive.  And dumb from a user standpoint, since it loses comments and makes it harder to track updates.  Thank you Nexus for smacking it down.

[HeyYou]

21 minutes ago, AaronOfMpls said:

Yah, spammers compromise many people's accounts via phishing scams, and by guessing weak or reused passwords.  And some will pay people to create accounts for them (in widely dispersed places or through proxies), since capchas etc only check that there's a human in the loop somewhere -- and it looks more like regular people creating accounts that way if it's not the same or similar IP addresses behind them. 

Oh my...  Yah, reposting as a separate mod might make sense for, say, a complete rebuild that becomes a different mod.  But usually you keep the old mod up, possibly marked obsolete, so people can re-download it for old saves. 

This is just ... excessive.  And dumb from a user standpoint, since it loses comments and makes it harder to track updates.  Thank you Nexus for smacking it down.

I am suspicious of any mod that closes it's comment section. Generally, that indicates to me that the mod has an issue, or does something undesirable, that the author doesn't want advertised in the comments..... So, yeah, no comments? No download.