Registration requirement

[Sir Taffsalot]

To stop all these spam bots we're been flooded with, can't you impliment some sort of registration requirement? I dunno, something like

 

Dark Mod is influenced by which game? Thief.

 

Dark mod is what type of game? Stealth

 

Just something everyone can answer except a spam bot.

[i30817]

It's not bots-

 

There are people poor enough in this world that they "work" in cubicle farms to register accounts in forums to copy-paste publicity (or surrender the account to a bot).

[BrokenArts]

They can still check their IP's to see what country they are from, and if there has been a problem. I deal with it all the time on Black Cat, awaiting moderation, they all get checked, every single one of them. Lot of them don't make it in.

[GameDevGoro]

It's not bots-

 

There are people poor enough in this world that they "work" in cubicle farms to register accounts in forums to copy-paste publicity (or surrender the account to a bot).

 

Exactly that occurred to me, too. The "bots" have names that are too consistently unique to be auto-generated.

 

But realistically, what can one do to prevent this? It's kinda like any other "crime" in that it can't be stopped unless it has already happened, thus a "bot" or "spam account" cannot be hindered until it's been put into existence. And then the "damage" has already been done.

 

Block IP ranges? Nope. That can potentially alienate people who accidentally land within that range, happened to me once.

Hmm ... ???

 

And somehow it seems like the status updates are the real target here, I don't see as many spam threads wanting to sell us Viagra or some other drug people apparently can't go without.

 

*shrug*

 

They can still check their IP's to see what country they are from, and if there has been a problem. I deal with it all the time on Black Cat, awaiting moderation, they all get checked, every single one of them. Lot of them don't make it in.

 

Valid point... There has to be a drawback right? For a good solution there's often a catch.

Edited January 30, 2012 by GameDevGoro

[RPGista]

Spam (and its related "industry") has got to be one of the craziest imbecilities ever conceived - who in their right minds would go to a forum on his free time, be tricked into reading some poorly constructed ad and realise, "Yep, I really need to buy me some viagra and/or enlarge my penis, I mean right now", or some such nonsense. What idiot could believe that flooding the internet with this trash would actually get people to buy more?

[OrbWeaver]

Spam (and its related "industry") has got to be one of the craziest imbecilities ever conceived - who in their right minds would go to a forum on his free time, be tricked into reading some poorly constructed ad and realise, "Yep, I really need to buy me some viagra and/or enlarge my penis, I mean right now", or some such nonsense. What idiot could believe that flooding the internet with this trash would actually get people to buy more?

 

Never underestimate the profit that can be made off human stupidity.

[Baddcog]

Spam (and its related "industry") has got to be one of the craziest imbecilities ever conceived - who in their right minds would go to a forum on his free time, be tricked into reading some poorly constructed ad and realise, "Yep, I really need to buy me some viagra and/or enlarge my penis, I mean right now", or some such nonsense. What idiot could believe that flooding the internet with this trash would actually get people to buy more?

 

How about junk mail? At least spam is just digital crap that can be deleted.

 

But the US Post service is funded in a large part by delivering actual trash to your home. Where you then have to recycle or send it to a landfill (where thousands of tons of it has been going for 50 years).

[SeriousToni]

They shouldn't send all those leaflets. It consumes so much time to browse through all of them. I laminated my letter box and only subscribed the ones I was interested in as e-mail newsletters.

[BrokenArts]

Exactly that occurred to me, too. The "bots" have names that are too consistently unique to be auto-generated.

 

But realistically, what can one do to prevent this? It's kinda like any other "crime" in that it can't be stopped unless it has already happened, thus a "bot" or "spam account" cannot be hindered until it's been put into existence. And then the "damage" has already been done.

 

Block IP ranges? Nope. That can potentially alienate people who accidentally land within that range, happened to me once.

Hmm ... ???

 

And somehow it seems like the status updates are the real target here, I don't see as many spam threads wanting to sell us Viagra or some other drug people apparently can't go without.

 

*shrug*

 

 

 

Valid point... There has to be a drawback right? For a good solution there's often a catch.

 

Use Stop Forum spam and Honey pot, I check the IP's, those sites are a must for the forum staff. It will weed out the good from the bad. I use those sites all the time. If their IP shows nothing, they are let in, simple as that.

[lost_soul]

If people would just refuse to buy from companies whose products are mentioned through either spam or annoying ads (I.e. audio ads when you visit a site), the problem would work itself out. There are some drug companies I will boycott on this premice alone.

 

Also, I'm not a business major or anything, but some say that the more you keep your product name out there, the more business you will get. It doesn't matter if it is bad or good publicity. "All publicity is good publicity".

 

Not sure if I believe that though.

Edited January 31, 2012 by lost_soul

[GameDevGoro]

If people would just refuse to buy from companies whose products are mentioned through either spam or annoying ads ...

 

You're forgetting the targets for these are people who simply don't know better. Imagine the newest internet user EVER. The kind of user who believes those shaking "error messages" on some ads saying: "U have 1 new message!".

 

These users are going to make mistakes, they simply don't know any better.

Edited January 31, 2012 by GameDevGoro

[lost_soul]

Yeah that's part of the problem. I've seen pop-ups where the designer has copied the Windows XP interface to try and trick people. As I was browsing in Linux, it made me laugh my ass off. The other problem is the massive amount of people with unpatched Windows machines. I've started installing Adblock Plus on users' machines because it helps them stay just a bit safer while online and helps them get more performance out of their hardware.

 

Question: By using AdBlock Plus on the TDM sites, am I hurting anyone? I'll disable it for here if it is costing any of you anything. Its mostly just to protect me from audio ads and those "minefield" pages where moving the mouse over causes pop-ups to appear.

 

There was actually a huge controversy about ABP allowing "non-intrusive" ads. It was funny because some folks were screaming "Sell OUTS!" and "fork the project!". I don't really care as long as they have strict rules prohibiting resource hungry/annoying ads.

[modetwo]

There are no ads on these forums.

 

We use the IPS spam service which is blocking a lot of account registrations, but we simply cannot block all because that would mean to disable new registrations.